William Archila

three disheveled sonnets

Little insect, little super fly, it happened like this, like an electric fragment 
I clocked out, surrendered to Coatepeque, free of the grid & greedy skunk.
I had it, bought myself a little cottage, brick made by the lake. A mango tree 
I planted there, a bookshelf for the better me & lived long my life dropping 
the needle on the waves. I listened to the dim lit dogs bark ohh & come 
to my loneliness slow as a crawl, low as a baritone that shook the roof 
looser than a crone I learned to love. Do I dare to love? Yes, I fall in love 
with the better me. Instead of living alone, let’s live close to each other’s own. 

What has brought you here? I’ve seen you in the asphalt road, deep in the brush
a cackle, though there will be no body. It’s definitely to spit the soiled roots 
of my exile, isn’t it? There are days the musical gods of trees grow & expand 
like a ring to absorb almost everything & no one has seen my minuscule name. 
No one has seen me consume ashes for nourishment, nor crash on the couch 
for days. For a moment I thought you were me & l was you. That’s all that’s left.

Who told you the cold north is the reign of gold. Who told you
it’s El Dorado upside down. Who taught you to speak English 
like a lizard. It’s the zipper in the sea monster’s costume. If you feel 
like I feel about frowning the eyebrows, then you’ve seen 
the uprisings here all along. Who asked you to pray to the emptiness
they granted you. Can’t you see we’re quarantined by a colony 
that spreads its own virus. Why are the walls of your house diseased
unhinged beneath the thick mud. Who asked you to sit in the trunk 
of the truck. Who said Spanish is your mother tongue. Your tongue 
is broke. Your tongue a circus act.

                                                        Why is the codex cracked open. 
Why are you mocking a bird floating somewhere in the netherworld. 
Without a doubt the hacking of forests is falling faster. Who told you 
to get closer to the end of the line. Who told you you exist. Who 
named you? I’m almost ready to bury you. Why are you so angry? 

Cipitio - not yet pollinated, not yet translated, that tint 
of youth in love with beer & noisy taverns, yellow lamps 
laden with girls, charming & attractive, riddled in sagacity 

or that blue close to the ocean, close to September, salt 
& spray that lingers in the brambles, because in Cuzcatlan
every turkey gets its Christmas, even Botticelli’s Venus. 

Cipitio - still a little short & invisible about the shoulders, still 
symmetrical, still a clatter of laughs into another dimension 
priesthoods, political hoods that wear the earth down

even there suffering among the dandelions, even there the thistle 
all hum & drone bending with fiction, with friction everyone 
drunk, everyone dead about the shoulders, not fully developed. 

There he is - corvine crown raised in a puddle. There was rain. 
There was always rain inside his head. Brief & almost immense.