Julián David Bañuelos
Cómo explicarte
Pensando en those andando along fronteras, pensando en comfortability nació en el desierto,
truth be sold: I miss ceiling fans and being called my daddy’s son. There are no mistakes.
Confiame. Ya hace veinte años since la primera muerte me cambió and halfway seems to still be
the shortest route. No quiero nada. No quiero na’. I had the want, the gana y las pillas torn de mi
espalda. ¿How I end up becoming upended at the root? A fruitless mulberry on the property line
en un Pueblo where the topsoil splits and suffocates after la lluvia viene. A year ago, el girasol
reminded the hand to reach in las partes más oscuro. Metí la mano y todavía me sentía
incompleta. Even still, Machín. Otro tipo me dijo que no hay nada verde en el desierto, which
warrants asking how he ended up in a concrete jungle after Iditarod-ing for so long, answers are
needless, my time is line breaks and solid titles, cuál es la diferencia entre la musa and ruse: un
montón de palabras listo para un nuevo significado. ¿Won’t you take a stab conmigo?
βάλλ' εἰς κόρακας
Ya sabes
que te estoy hablando
This is far from slander
My list of grievances is dying alone
Como mi bodega
¿I never worry
about what I can do without
Even if polvo covered
What says I when fallen on unused
tracks or after the village is gone?
I grieve enough a day
And refuse to name it suffering
In a field at sunset
I am most afraid a mi mismo
Never the poet, never the girasol
Never the engineer, never the pajarita
You have found yourself birdwatching
Cuando sale el sol
Capaz
My kindness extended and lapped itself
quieres que me quede
pero muero recordándote, the stent
is poem reaching to dust off the shelf
quieres que me concede
though my past, present, and future is movement
underground and timely (most days)(Judas tree)
quiero k te fede
like a quick dap headed downtown my stint
here has always been the half-life of las cartas that we
once sent
Bio
Julián David Bañuelos is a Chicano poet and translator from Lubbock, TX. His poems and translations can be seen in The Cincinnati Review, The Hopkins Review, The Latino Book Review, The Common, and many more. His unpublished collection, Las Cancioncitas, was recently selected as a 2023 National Poetry Series & 2023 X.J. Kennedy Finalist. His forthcoming collection, Epode, will be published by Acre Books in 2027. He teaches literature at St. Paul’s School of Nursing and lives in New York City. You can find his work at www.juliandavidbanuelos.com.