Carmen Calatayud
Bio:
Carmen Calatayud is the daughter of a Spanish immigrant father and Irish immigrant mother. Her poetry book In the Company of Spirits (Press 53) was a runner-up for the Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award and a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Her work has been featured in print and online by Cutthroat, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, Virginia Quarterly Review and other journals, and most recently anthologized in Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice (University of Arizona Press).
Hurricane Season
1. You,
perched next to a powder blue
pillow on the black vinyl couch parked in front of a TV that shows poker cards flicker and fly while you drink
your fifth bottle of beer.
The waters come.
2.Pink bruises imprint your lover’s spine.
You say You don’t remember Her back was in pieces, put together as a stained-glass puzzle and now moves like a stripped gear shaft.
The waters come.
3.This lover pauses at an imaginary altar for the ex-girlfriend she’ll never meet.
You say You don’t remember
How you litthat woman’s skin on fire, and
the second-degree burns
turned the smooth skin of her legs into wild sockeye salmon flesh.
The waters come.
4.Today this lover tries to forget that you almost turned her into a ripe hibiscus flame last summer.
You say (of course) You don’t remember.
She smells like burned salt.
She’s a heavy blackened wind.
The waters come.
5.Who knows what lives in your memory (You don’t remember) (You don’t remember) (You don’t remember)Or
if the combustion in her head will burn her brain.
The waters come.
6.If waves wash you away with the giant screen that soothes you,
your lover will leap on the coffee table that’s left
dance by flashlight
pirouette into still damp air.
perched next to a powder blue
pillow on the black vinyl couch parked in front of a TV that shows poker cards flicker and fly while you drink
your fifth bottle of beer.
The waters come.
2.Pink bruises imprint your lover’s spine.
You say You don’t remember Her back was in pieces, put together as a stained-glass puzzle and now moves like a stripped gear shaft.
The waters come.
3.This lover pauses at an imaginary altar for the ex-girlfriend she’ll never meet.
You say You don’t remember
How you litthat woman’s skin on fire, and
the second-degree burns
turned the smooth skin of her legs into wild sockeye salmon flesh.
The waters come.
4.Today this lover tries to forget that you almost turned her into a ripe hibiscus flame last summer.
You say (of course) You don’t remember.
She smells like burned salt.
She’s a heavy blackened wind.
The waters come.
5.Who knows what lives in your memory (You don’t remember) (You don’t remember) (You don’t remember)Or
if the combustion in her head will burn her brain.
The waters come.
6.If waves wash you away with the giant screen that soothes you,
your lover will leap on the coffee table that’s left
dance by flashlight
pirouette into still damp air.
