CAMERA OBSCURA
When you cut an onion in half
and lay it sideways,
it looks like a breast.
Lots of tiny veins
and a lot of vulnerability.
When from a nearby hill,
white-hot shells fall on a city,
the holes in the asphalt look like roses.
The city is a rose garden
at war.
It is true that one can wear
both knives and crosses.
But it is also true
what Jasmina and Albert say,
that one can shoot
and not shoot.
Books don’t teach us anything,
they only help the canopies
that grow in the story
to smell in the nostrils of the earth.
That cemeteries breathe
like all modern galleries
and springtime places.
At the bottom of the camera lens
a woman drinks arsenic,
the Spanish broom blooms.