Dena Rash Guzman 

Pages Apocalypse

I often misspell “apocolypse” 
I spell it like that, and spellcheck 
alerts me of my mistake.

Apocalypse is a complex 
word choice, heavy and hard.
Apocalypses? Is this its plural?
Could there be a plural? 
How could there be more than one?
Spellcheck says nothing
so it is, so it is. God never
lets me know when I have
made a spelling error. 
This is how I know the truth:
only spellcheck exists.

I often misspell apocalypse,
and harbor a fear that should
I ever get it right without spellcheck,
God will prove to be real 
and apocalypse will happen.
Shit does, why not that? 

If it comes, the apocalypse,
I want to be in Acapulco,
spellcheck or God be damned,
to calypso my way through
it with a handsome chulo.
Ayi, Papi. Apapicalypsapulco. 




Moon Baby Eats Lunch In Shanghai

moon faced baby at breast, curled in a one arm cradle,
baby blue baby shoe over mother’s elbow.
mother at the cart cooking with her free arm
under a tree in the rainy sunlit leaf shadow.
moon faced baby is fat.
mother mother mother

deep down, a pull. I want to take the baby
hold him, feed him rice from a bowl, buy him milk in a box,
give him a bath, rock him until his caterpillar lashes
shut to dreams

baby eyes me, little smile, breast milk moon cheek.
baby moon twists, still latched, to see me better.
mother winces, eyes me too

moon baby’s mother thrusts a bowl at me one handed. I am free.
I eat my rice and meat, 
moon cheek baby free,
alone. 




Dena Rash Guzman is a poet and editor living and working on a sixty acre farm in the Mt. Hood Wilderness near Portland, Oregon. Founder of the literary journal Unshod Quills, she is also a contributing author to and Managing Director North America for independent English language Shanghai based publisher, HALiterature. She has been published online and in print. Dog On A Chain Press will release a chap of her poetry in 2012, as will HAL Publishing release her first novella. She also co-curated and co-produced the Shanghai Tunnels Project International Video Poetry Film Festival in 2012. More at www.denarashguzman.com.  




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