I was born in Virginia. From my adoptive father, a judge whose verdicts
were blackened by bribery, I learned to chew tobacco leaves and to reach the spot
where girls’ spines end.
One night I stole the Chevrolet keys and I drove her
to Atlanta. I lived in the car and at nights, on the back seat springs,
I folded the cloths to pillow size. Once, when they caught
me urinating near the wheels and fined me 50 dollars,
I told the judge that the sky is the ceiling and the back bumper is the toilet.
One day my legitimate father showed up at the restaurant where I worked. He looked at me,
and I sewed eyes in a magical needle that I always kept
in the pocket of my longing,
if this story were not real, it could have been planted
in a Johnny Cash song, but I, who brushed my teeth
five times a day to remove the tobaccos stains, vomit all
the Johnnys Cashs into the same bowl in which I vomit Virginia.
”Where will the bomb fall” sings Roger Waters in the tape cassette player
and I begin to understand that one cannot erase the Tommy gun from one’s memory
that my adoptive father kept in the drawer.
No cloud has blackened
or fallen
in this poem. I was then
the philosopher of pouring the coffee
moment at a motel
where the blonde waitress wants
to drown with you in a pile of sugar.
Why do you wear a bra, I once asked someone like this,
and she said that her breasts, like my life, are a fist
which is better off concealed in a glove.
P.S. Blues About the Real Life
I was not born in Virginia. My father was a lock of silence on
his lips’ doors,
ever since his death I follow him in the back seats
of bus no.61.
The memory halts at stops, opens a door,
rings the bell and sways when there is no room to sit.
Under its wheels beats an asphalt heart
and I on the sidewalks’ back
continue to whip my heels as a rod.
Translated by Hanni Dimitstein