José Luis Gutiérrez

Liminal Sea
 
Outside the world is water.
 
From these banished heights, at the oracular hour
 
from Judah to Santiago on Sunset houses float
across this last vernal halation of the dying day
 
the unaccountable seeping in as spectral fires light the star canvas―
 
through windows, the molecular churn
of bodies caught in their intractable orbits.
 
Already the waves carry us toward yesterday’s
quieter soundings.
 
 
 
 
Coda
 
     Deh, quando tu sarai tornato al mondo…ricorditi di me
                             ―Dante, Purgatorio
 
This opening in the field―
felted as distance,
lush as speech
excavating air:
tugs at the blood knot
invites
circular reparations.
 
*
 
To say: I felt you pass through me
would be imprecise.
 
More: I was the ghost of your habitation
for a day, maybe two.
 
My lightening unto your dark or conversely.
 
Moon in the mirroring pond of elocution.
 
 
 
 
José Luis Gutiérrez is a San Francisco poet. His work has appeared in Spillway, Eratio, 99 Poems for the 99 Percent, San Francisco Poets 11, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts, Margie, Letterbox, DMQ, Apropos Literary Journal and is forthcoming in the Mutanabbi Street Anthology due out 2012 through PM Press.




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