LatinosUSA

Camera Obscura

This darkened chamber 
that is your heart,
taking these mental pictures
and making love a mere art. 

An image begins to take hold
when this light is reflected.
Shadows begin to take shape 
as another love is deflected. 

I am a camera: 
a blind, unblinking eye on you,
gathering evidence from the prints
in a vain search for just one clue. 

When you see yourself there,
an image then comes to mind
of someone, something, somewhere
and just what you’ve left behind. 

The vision shifts and settles
inverted, the image takes on a form.
The greatest shadows will appear
across the sky just before a storm.  

And yet you are not the mystery,
nor is it found in what you do.
It has something to do with me,
and my inability to say adieu. 

Our fates seem to be so intertwined,
we cannot get distance from what we are.
We need to see our love from a camera, 
through a shaded aperture, from afar. 

previously published in Cool Beans Literary Journal

~~

Chiaroscuro

I once spent three days driving through Italy, 
yet the country was really driving me
not crazy, but somewhere I had never been. 
I drove up a mountain, trying hard to keep up 
with the crazy momentum of the cars ahead and behind,
so as not to fall off the edge.  
There were three of us in that car:
my sister, my cousin, and me,
on a journey that led us down a road
and onto and into ourselves.
I vowed never to return to Italy,
a country of such chaos and cacophony.
There is a price to be paid 
for such mystery and history.  

I recently spent three months on a journey with you,
a crazy rollercoaster ride
with no one at the controls.
The mountain I had to climb
alone, with you, was you.
You took me on a journey 
you should have taken alone.
I tried to keep up with you,
but your stories changed often,
and I stumbled on the many masks
that fell from your face. 
There were three of us that day 
when you told me it was finito: 
You, me, and your daughter driving motionless,
as if in a dream.  

I once said I would never return to Mussolini’s Italy, 
that a country of such emotion
drains me of my energy, and yet I remember 
Italy now, a sunny memory, a darkened photo. 
It calls to me and won’t rest until I answer.
I promised myself that last day
that I would never see you again, 
yet you appear in memory and in person, 
real, unreal, surreal. 
In the bar last night, you were
half-dream, half-shadow, half-hidden, 
as you always were and yet,
I want you as I want Italy. 
Chiaroscuro…

previously published in Strangers & Karma

~~

Pentimento

I just want to wrap myself around you
the way I wrap myself around a word.
I play with this word even as I say it
and feel its contours on my tongue. 

	The word has nuance: Pentimento, 
	and like you is merely a memento. 

I know I must begin to look at you
as one would look at a painting.
With one rub of the dusty canvas
I may see something emerge below.

	Pentimento: the word creates a picture in my mind
	hinting at who you are and what you’ve left behind.

If I can make sense out of this picture
and find the image in what lies below,
then I will clear the canvas completely
and with fresh strokes paint my own story.

	Pentimento: a haunting sound rises and reverberates, 
	but your peccadillo lost power and no longer resonates.  

previously published in Wayward Literature