Ruben Quesada

 

Three poems from Next Extinct Mammal:

My First Sight of St. Louis

Hyperbolic cosine, a sickle rising 
up against the Mississippi River, 
its widening reflection exposes pods 
of fiery clouds: dolphins sinking past 
the alpenglow of tomorrow and tomorrow. 
An overflow of arable plains, turbid skies, 
backwash of homes, ebbing sea grass 
meadows of river birch rising en masse; 
tangerine leaves among stained-glass 
throngs of silver leaves in waves, winged-bean 
green epiphany of skyline behind polished steel.

 

Cimmerian

From my bedroom window, driving 
through town, everywhere I sit, 
the blue like Picasso’s player 
swells overhead, blue behind strings 
of clouds which lengthen 
like loose ligaments into the horizon.
Every day, 
                  you should breathe in deeply 
for the fireflies and the crickets; watch 
the constellations of moths choke 
on the glowing street lamps and the yawning 
cockroaches before the sun flushes away. 

 

Nostalgia

Too much time has passed, 
and I’ve almost lost this freight 
of memories, that dawning
of light over bluestem grass 
prairies, the large-flowered 
beardtongue and skeleton weed, or failed 
to preserve the slow sea-roar 
in my lungs expanding against my breast 
bone, my nose numbing from the cold, my lashes 
freezing in clusters of snowflakes. Here, 
alone on the westbound train 
in Des Moines, rescued from the wind 
chill of the Raccoon River, homes rise 
like icebergs along East Locust Street, the patina 
of my black hair moving past snow 
flurried storefronts might be mistaken 
for the next extinct mammal in America.