Tundra
It is the longest walk
that you will ever take.
It is the things you have known.
It is bending
past the break.
It is the way you have grown.
It is the trudge
in the frozen vastness.
It is your breathing
attacking the silence.
It is what you should have known.
It is going nowhere slow.
And as you wander,
lost in the rhythm of your steps.
And as you wander,
And there is no end to the cold.
The visions wrap you
with their filigreed fingers.
The endless icing
waits to receive you,
like the sugary kiss
after the brittle answer.
Nothing is vaster
than nothing walking.
Only thunder.
On the Morrow
On the morrow,
will you still walk
beside me?
Or will
the silent light
engulf me?
The cooling ground,
I cannot leave you there.
Tarry if you can.
The wheel of seasons
will spin around us
till we are as slight
as glimpses.
The evening light
I looked across
to find you
is slowly fading.
The darkened stair
I must descend alone.
Golden Ponies
I do not want to drown
beneath the eyelid of this town.
I will die peeled of my mind,
as the clouds come pressing down
and fill my lungs with empty sky.
The trees are heavy
where we have hung
all our attitudes, there.
Shards of—
Just—
Of broken—
Fragment—
Something stuck—
I am frozen.
I feel the squeaky sound
of our roofs go spinning round.
It perforates me, and all
the golden ponies turn to brown.
There is no reflection.
There is no turning.
Just a piece that was thrown out.
See our roofs go spinning round…
The Marrow
When you get down to the marrow,
when you get right down to the marrow,
all the roads are straight and narrow,
and words just seem to fall away.
When you get down to the marrow,
when you get right down to the marrow,
the field is fertile or it is fallow,
you are either here or someplace else.
When you get down to the marrow,
when you get right down to the marrow,
and the flesh has all been pierced with arrows,
and the bandages have all been removed.
When you get down to the marrow,
when you get right down to the marrow,
our apologies seem so callow,
unfledged as a bird.
Keep me close.
Those Who Remain
Up upon the ridge,
in amongst the trees,
I look down upon the dawn
of an open valley.
There the lights
have yet to die.
One by one they yield
before the day.
The mist that softly cooled
is now burnt off the grey.
In betwixt the makeshift rubble
lies my secret jewel.
I have no truths,
but I have had troubles.
And I am here to say
I have something yet to lose.
And though fear grips me
like the blue air grips a falling man,
my doubts stand fewer even
than my hopes.
And though I will not last past
the last skip of my stone,
my visions incandesce
and open.
As the petals
fall from this embrace,
I will believe.
Tulip
Love is our name.
Love is our tattoo.
Love is our flower.
Love is our jungle.
Run along the paths
and dangle from the vines.
Eat the green fruit
full of insects and lies.
Sleep upon the leaves
in the long wet night.
Drip drop, drip drip drop.
Love is our arrow.
Love is our turban.
Love is our lantern.
Love is our bell.
You pass through the curtain..
All the ringing that gets knotted in the breeze
falls like tubers, like bulbs that light the way,
bulbs that explode underground in cold weather,
pushing up their goblets like fistfuls of sky,
in the radiance, goldfish aloft, wounds on the firmament.
You are opening, splashing,
like a field of tulips.
You are a field of tulips.
You are a field.
Bask.
Moths
In your empty light,
the world had thought of leaving.
In your empty light,
moths were softly drifting.
In your empty light,
limbs left all akimbo.
In your empty light,
whimpering and droning.
In your empty light,
the land was ripped asunder.
In your empty light,
the children played with pain.
In your empty light,
the songs were all redundant.
In your empty light,
the clouds were all ashamed.
In your empty light,
nothing ever changed.
About the Author
The son of Colombian parents, George Mario Angel Quintero was born in 1964 in San Francisco, California, where he spent his first thirty years. He studied literature at the University of California and was later awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Fiction from Stanford University. He has published fiction, poetry, and essays in English as George Angel in literary magazines and the chapbook Globo (1996), and received the Nilon Award from Fiction Collective 2 for his book The Fifth Season (1996). He has since published a book of new and selected poems written in English, On the Voice (2016). Since 1995, he has lived in Medellin, Colombia, where, under the name Mario Angel Quintero, he has published six Spanish poetry collections, as well as three books of plays in Spanish. His visual art has been exhibited and published and he has also illustrated books. Since 2003, he has worked as director and playwright of the theatre company Párpado Teatro, and is a founding member of the musical groups Underflavour and Sell the Elephant.
