Day: October 6, 2025

Arrows

On By vequinoxIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

excerpt

Gregorio, mounted on Babieca, joined half a dozen riders who
were pursuing the runaways. Several of the riders were herding the
natives with the points of their spears. There were older men among
the natives, but no warriors.
In the distance, Gregorio chased a young woman who refused to
stop. He took his foot out of the stirrup and landed a kick on her back
that sent her flying. She fell head over heels in the tall grass. When I
saw Gregorio leap off Babieca and throw himself upon the girl, my
legs began moving before I had time to think.
I could see Gregorio’s back in the tall grass and I feared he would
rape her. Beneath him, the girl shrieked. From a distance, I could not
see her face. Losada had explicitly forbidden any harm to the
natives, as the king had forbidden their enslavement, apparently to
the same effect.
I could see them struggling. I called him again and again, still
forty long paces away. He fumbled at his breeches, while keeping
her down one-handed, and pushed against her. Again she shrieked.
Damn his soul. He was not much better than Pánfilo. I came from
behind and kicked him in the ribs, which thudded like a broken
drum. I tumbled over him. He fell on his side. I scrambled away and
got a glimpse of his disgusting member besmeared with blood.
Gregorio stood up, furious, and grabbed a handful of her hair. He
raised her by the hair, and I beheld her face as she threw up her
hands, her eyes round with terror. A dead weight sank inside me.
Horror, mixed with a shameful joy, gave way to a surge of wrath as I
took in what had happened. It was the girl by the river, the girl with
eyes like the setting sun.
Something moved in the grass at her feet, something with
grey-brown fur. The monkey. My hands curled into fists. As I fought
the urge to punish Gregorio, the monkey clambered up his side and
bit him on the ear.
With a swift motion, Gregorio let go of the girl and grabbed the
monkey by the feet. He swung it against the trunk of a massive
rubber tree as it howled and whined, eyes unfocused but terrified.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073522

Tasos Livaditis – Selected Poems

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The Musician

Often during the night, without noticing it, I’d arrive to
another city where there was no other but an old man who dreamed
that someday he’d become a musician; and now he sat in the rain half
naked; he was covering an old, imaginary violin with his coat over
his knees.
“Can you hear it?” he asks me “yes” I say to him “I’ve always heard it” while at the far end of the road the statue narrated the true voyage to the birds.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087367R7C

Opera Bufa

On By vequinoxIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sixteenth Hour
The watermelon drips on my beard
droplets of pleasure under the thick
grapevine shade from where apparitions
of lust spring up to dominate the heated
summer evening uncertain July without
a song on the prophet’s lips teased
from incongruous meditation
on a forgotten algorithm
of a sticky honeybee buzzing
in between gardenia stems of fear uncoiling
ever so tenderly into the lost
will of anathema He lounges still in cloud retreat
reflecting on whether He can triumph in
the fiasco of His first trial
sagacious blue-haired Death
elevates from the
bowels of fiery undercurrents
informs about a savior
warns that what is already
cannot be undone without expense
send them a willing savior
let him hold sin in his hands
and display him to the eyes
of Fates they need something
to meddle in or they risk
growing senile and people comply
when He shortly describes to
them the cross shape taken
from the limbs of a philandering
oak to frame the guest’s body and using forged
blacksmith pins He fastens the extremities
and heart upon the viewpoint
while nails bleat ‘why?’ and red-stained
cross answers: who cares?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763092