Alejandro Escudé

August 5, 2020

“Bed Sheets (Moving Out After Separation)” by Alejandro EscudéPosted by

Alejandro Escudé

BED SHEETS (MOVING OUT AFTER SEPARATION)

I wanted my soul out of the house, too.
So, I took all my diaries—twenty or so,
from the past twenty years. And I slipped them
into the recycling bin. I took all my photos,
baby, childhood, adolescence, college years,
and trashed those, too. I took my blood pressure reader,
and I took the white carnival mask I bought in Venice.
I wasn’t going to leave myself at the house.
She offered me sheets for my bed. I took them 
to the new place then dumped them in the trash bin. 
She offered me the dog’s bed, and I accepted,
but it never even made it close to his food bowl.
I took my bicycle, the one that folds up to fit inside a car.
I was proud to buy it for myself. She didn’t understand 
the purchase. She looked at me, I remember this,
as if I’d acquired a reptile who we’d now have to feed
live mice and crickets. A bicycle so I could get in shape.
A fucking bicycle! Do you understand what I’m driving at?
She wanted my father to help her move out, too.
Her brother-in-law would be there, but they needed
my father’s truck. My father loved her like a daughter.
In many ways, he was just as hurt as me.
I lied and said my father couldn’t help. If she wanted 
the patio furniture then she’d have to figure out a way 
to haul it. The moon that night was a harvest moon.
Yellow. Smudged by leftover rain clouds or wind.
What the hell do I know about weather?

—from Rattle #68, Summer 2020

__________

Alejandro Escudé: “I didn’t realize the importance of having engaged in a lifelong relationship with poetry until I needed it to survive. It’s an instrument, a companion instrument that nobody can take away from you. It’s also a form of insulation from the wasteland of the world where you can go when you need a break or a place to quietly contemplate and study the common absurdities of human experience. Every day, we face a wasteland. Sometimes, it’s an aggressive boss, an angry driver, a public or private injustice of some sort. Other times it’s a rampant disease altering our environment for an extended period of time. Whatever the case, poetry is there like a garden, welcoming us with its eternal shade and warmth and wisdom.” (web)

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June 14, 2020

“My Body Is Antifa” by Alejandro EscudéPosted by

Alejandro Escudé

MY BODY IS ANTIFA

There’s a city in my body
and its been barricaded, its walls
spray-painted, mural-full; less
a collection of neighborhoods
and more a labyrinth of walls
made of garnished elephants
so that the metropolis wobbles
and throbs. Belonging is its motto,
every citizen on his or her knees,
the only cars a caravan of bees
and no governor like a Macy’s
balloon pulled down a boulevard
by a team of black-clad troops.
My body is Antifa, and I stand
for language without the burden
of truth. I give you cracked hands,
tear-gassed eyes, and unidealized
love. No statues to view, killers
on horseback, young soldiers
marching to certain death,
dated clothes so bloody they
stand alone. Let me guide you
to the precinct where restraints
are scrapped like metal to forge
new human braces, cups, plates,
large shared spoons to pour
sick meat into glorious molds.

—from Poets Respond
June 14, 2020

__________

Alejandro Escudé: “It’s time for a recreation. We all feel like tearing everything down and starting all over. I now that’s how I feel within my own body, where my spirit resides. The story of the protesters in Seattle who took over the Capitol Hill neighborhood made me think of Walt Whitman’s call for a greater democratic spirit in America and his symbol for that: the human body. Its sacredness, the way it cannot and shouldn’t be violated. Perhaps that’s the only real conflict there ever was.”

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October 6, 2019

“Hellbent” by Alejandro EscudéPosted by

Alejandro Escudé

HELLBENT

One could be strolling at the farmer’s market
In a foul mood—yet still shelling out cash
To buy heirloom tomatoes and prized beets
And some busybody is sure to take issue
With the tilt of your grin, hunched shoulders,
Your self-pity on display. Are they afraid?
“He’s becoming unhinged,” they write, they say.
Hellbent on destroying the anger in the man
And then the man inside the man. I was there,
Like Trump, mad as hell, victimized, trolled,
Scrutinized like a lab rat who refuses to eat
The cheese—I have fantasies of lighting up
A cigarette in my classroom, go scream at
The Principal, of letting them all see the results
Of a bitter, yet muted divorce. I, too, wish
To make friends with dictators, destroy
Those who speak the language as though it
Were made of flowers; my language, iron-fisted,
Uncontrolled, ruinous. Fuck the eternal press
Conference, I say. Even a bully can be bullied.
For years, I also wore my conflicts like a suit.
I wanted to force them to eat their own
Faces. I was a frightened, panicked brute.
So forgive me if I take offense when you
Call the President repugnant, aberrant,
Unhinged—as if there were a door to have
Been attached too, a house beyond the door
To love. My mood was as foul as the Leader
Of the Free Worlds’. I was repugnant,
Aberrant, and I, too, built a thousand walls.

—from Poets Respond
October 6, 2019

__________

Alejandro Escudé: “I don’t like when press outlets like CNN jump all over Trump. I don’t like the guy, but something is wrong about the way some news agencies choose to discuss issues surrounding the President. The words they use betray a kind of uniformed thinking as well. They’re bullies bullying a bully. I usually don’t give a shit what happens to bullies, but I feel for anyone trapped in a kind of social jail–and at such an advanced age too! Aggression is ugly, and ugliness doesn’t just exist on one side of the political spectrum.” (web)

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February 25, 2019

“A River of Stars” by Alejandro EscudéPosted by

Alejandro Escudé

A RIVER OF STARS

Look how things have turned around on the Criminal Deep State.
—Donald J. Trump

I visited, once, the Deep State,
with its marshy hills and dark swamps.
Nobody met me there—alone,
I guided myself along its abandoned roads,
the tree stumps contorted into the torsos
of long dead heroes, a sinkhole
every couple of miles or so kept me
on my toes. I spoke to a local who was
all eyes, no mouth or ears. He stared
at me in amazement, then sadness.
I found a church in the distance,
then the distance became the church.
There were bottle caps on the side
of the road, which I mistook for bottle caps.
Little circular molds to fit lies into.
A woman sat in a rocking chair; she
signaled that the train approached,
soundless. I moved away just in time,
and she beckoned me to her side.
“You don’t want what you want,” she said.
I didn’t understand because I’m not
from the Deep State. She dropped her
chin, murmuring, “You should’ve come
yesterday.” Everywhere there were men
hanging from trees by their neckties.
Naked women danced in red-lit rooms
of abandoned hotels; I approached one,
but she grew smaller with each step
I took toward her. I opened the door
and there was nothing in the room
except a warm red glow. Across
the street I could see men walking
into other rooms, then embraced by
other women who wouldn’t shrink.
Above, time flowed on, a river of stars.
And in the bars, the cups were empty
of drink, though the patrons imbibed
to excess, stumbling over themselves,
three or four spiraling like tumbleweeds.
Across the vast, though arid, fields,
grungy farm workers planted tiny Bibles
like seeds in fruitless dirt. One smiled at me,
dumbly, as he bent up from his work.

—from Rattle #62, Winter 2018

__________

Alejandro Escudé: “I think ‘Deep State’ is simply a euphemism for animal-like greed. To me, that’s not in any way intelligence or cunning, traits that seem to be implied by the connotation of the term. Would you call a pack of ravenous wolves the ‘Deep State?’” (web)

 

Alejandro Escudé is the guest on Rattlecast #57. Click here to watch!

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November 4, 2018

“The Migrant Caravan” by Alejandro EscudéPosted by

Alejandro Escudé

THE MIGRANT CARAVAN

It is not politically correct.
It does not prevent smoking.
It doesn’t watch its calorie consumption
Or its intake of meats.
It doesn’t care if it culturally appropriates,
Or if it’s inappropriate in any way.
The migrant caravan
Needs to feed its children.
It needs to get its children off of violent streets,
But the migrant caravan doesn’t care
About GMOs or the Second Amendment.
The migrant caravan doesn’t care about 9/11.
It never saw the planes fly into the first or the second Tower.
The migrant caravan doesn’t have power.
It doesn’t have power at work.
It’s doesn’t have power within the government.
It doesn’t have work.
And it doesn’t really have a government.
The migrant caravan doesn’t care about carpooling
Although the migrant caravan could be said
To be made up of one large carpool.
The migrant caravan does not consist of dog persons
Or cat persons. It does not take vitamins
Or pills to fight depression and anxiety
Though it may feel depressed
And/or anxious. It has been suffering
from the hard traumas and the soft traumas, too.
The migrant caravan might be carrying
A man with erectile dysfunction or a woman
Who suffers from constant migraines.
It might have dozens and dozens of children
With ADD and some with dyslexia.
Mental illness, a skull that can be undone
Like a Rubik’s Cube, walks with the migrant caravan, too.
The migrant caravan doesn’t maintain a Twitter account.
The migrant caravan doesn’t understand
What Donald Trump expounds in English.
The migrant caravan doesn’t have the time
For Trump’s mistakes in etiquette.
It doesn’t scrutinize every single press release.
The migrant caravan isn’t a beast.
It is a city of God, moving.
The migrant people are God’s chosen people.
It rotates with the Earth.
It is the cruel animals and the sky.
The migrant caravan is the day and the night.
The migrant caravan doesn’t discuss poetry,
Or see or hear, or speak eloquently
About modern art or classical music.
But the migrant caravan
Does dance and make art and write poetry.
The migrant caravan will not cease at the sea.
It will continue walking, like thousands of Christs,
Over the top of the suddenly calm water
Toward the apostles that await them
In triad after triad of fishing boats, hoping
To haul them inside nets made of the fibrous skin
Of human hearts miraculously still beating
And bright as bright red stars.

—from Poets Respond
November 4, 2018

__________

Alejandro Escudé: “Personally, I find some aspects of contemporaneous American life scarier than any danger present in the streets and neighborhoods of Latin America. Examples include Trumps Hitler-like rise, the Left’s insistence on absolute political correctness, the obsessive focus on the war of the sexes played out in politics and Hollywood and, like, every damn place else, the fact that rents are stellar-high and apartment managers treat young children as if they were the carriers of some deadly disease, that ageism is rampant in the workplace, teachers get paid a pittance, and homeless people are multiplying on the sides of highways. Roger Stone. Omarosa. Alec Baldwin. Megyn Kelly. Stephen Miller. Sarah Silverman. So, let the caravan come, I say.” (web)

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May 2, 2018

“The First Time I Took My Gun to the Range” by Alejandro EscudéPosted by

Alejandro Escudé

THE FIRST TIME I TOOK MY GUN TO THE RANGE

I looked at the gun and it fired.
My finger was left on the trigger
and the bullet went into the range but high
so that it left a poof-dust on the ceiling
but no one noticed—my heart
sped up, I’d literally watched fire fire from the barrel.

First lesson: never put your finger on the trigger
until you are sure of the target you want to destroy
and what’s beyond it.

That night, I thought, what if the gun
had been aiming at me? My face? My foot?
My chest? I thought about it and thought about it
until I decided not to regret anything
anymore.

The following morning
I was still happy I owned a gun.

—from Rattle #59, Spring 2018
Tribute to Immigrant Poets

[download audio]

__________

Alejandro Escudé: “It’s weird being an immigrant when you have come so young. The birth country becomes mythological. It becomes this sort of poetry in itself, and you get confused between the dreams you had when you were little and the real place. So it becomes a real storehouse of poetry. … I read to assimilate. I think every poet has their moment. For me it was ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ ‘When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table …’ It was lines like those, and that outsider feeling of Prufrock, that sense that something’s different about me. It was really a kind of longing in that poem that I gravitated toward. My English teacher gave me that poem, and I remember sitting at my desk thinking, ‘What is this?’” (web)

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June 15, 2017

“Republican in Red” by Alejandro EscudéPosted by

Alejandro Escudé

REPUBLICAN IN RED

Can you write about guns? The sun-glint off of them
I suppose—Aristotle’s stern belief in material things,
the fact that they’re an object with expeditious words
running alongside of the barrel. I recall making guns
when I was a kid with wood from my father’s workshop.
They were machine gun type shapes, and walkie talkies
attached to them by a string. I spent hours decorating them;
finished, they appeared as colorful as the Mayan pyramids
were said to have been. They’re just splinters in the mind
of philosophers now. I played baseball back then too.
I wore a baseball undershirt beneath my starch-white uniform
which didn’t have Republican written in red. It said Phillies
or Mets instead. I couldn’t hit that ball if I tried. It may
as well have been a bullet, whizzing, as those bullets
whizzed by congressmen playing baseball in Alexandria.
I didn’t know that, did you? That bullets actually whiz,
that they strike the dirt (baseball-playing dirt, the kind
that smells like summer and innocence) near the dugout
and create a puff, that you can see and feel the puffs of dirt
if you’re seeking cover in a dugout, as if the world had
ceased playing baseball and the day had turned to night
and you were alone with your philosophy, your party,
and your body, which is nothing but bone and blood.

—Poets Respond
June 15, 2017

[download audio]

__________

Alejandro Escudé: “The shooting of Republican congressmen in Alexandria is a tragedy for our country. Lawmakers have to realize how important it is to safeguard the morale of American citizens. It’s not just about achieving a given political party’s ends. It’s also about maintaining the emotional safety of the public and ensuring that longstanding American traditions, values, and truths are upheld and remain sacred. Some will argue that the gunman did not have these ideas in mind when he committed this heinous crime, but I contend that people who are on a psychological precipice are more susceptible to the general mood of the society in which they live. They usurp this corrosive energy and have no healthy barrier to prevent them from carrying out such atrocities. We are not as separated as we perceive ourselves to be.” (webpage)

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