Ricardo Alberto Maldonado: Three Poems

Non Fiction

A hammer
by the iron windows.

I am a man, I argued,
for thou hast made me glad
through thy work.

I am seated.

I smashed wafers by
the arbors. I stopped there.

If everyone dies or goes
to the seeds, I will enter with a lock.
I understand I occupy
a bed.

Before the flood, I decided
to walk home
and come down with a fever.

Of Men

Orange buttons
Are not green. The heart
Is volume, and within, is within,

Thinking about blocks.

The need to become vestigial,
A tad frugal with the soup.

A shoveled man thinks
Of himself
As the one who opens doors

Fastidiously. If it weren’t
For your ribs, I’d be abrupt,
Remove the obstacle, and
Collapse on a bed.

Shipwrecks are constant:
Goya-red.

These ones, of course, shut
A door against me.

Galápagos

One reads about plagues,
about monsters.
The chalk reduced over the years.
One attempts to account
for the movement:
houses are ripped out,
houses full of shoes.
Ahead of them: two attendants
on a mast, grey coats.
Serpents beset
the skull and settle
there. Hands are never
part of the procedure.
No one returns.