I was about to…Rigoberto¹
López Pérez, serene, takes a seat
right next to me. I glimpse from the
corner of my eye that he is being followed.
The empty notebook he carries tells me that he waits
–for something worth the wait. Which is also clear from the linen
suit, the perfect English tie knot, the first communion shoes. I accept
that my turn to ask has come. An unsuspected calm makes us company.
I talk to him about Charlotte, about Cesar’s own child, about Sasha
Ulianov. What have they said to you? How many times can
one die in the same manner? There is a breath of fever in
the air, and the line between land and sea becomes less
blurry. The tide rises and ebbs, rises and ebbs and
rises until it turns into a spear; then, it punctures
the horizon from end to end. A shadow who
was staring down backs off; she has seen
something. In front of us the ocean is
parted; a golden canal, and a
sealed door, deep in the
background, a carmine
doorknob exploding
silently, a lone,
expansive,
slow,
flash.

[1] A poet, artist and composer. He assassinated Anastasio Somoza García, the longtime dictator of Nicaragua

***

Francisco Larios, writer and translator, has published three full poetry collections in Spanish: Cada Sol Repetido, (“Every returning sun”), Anamá Press, Managua, Nicaragua, November, 2010, La Isla de Whitman, (“Whitman’s Island”), Buenos Aires Poetry, Argentina, 2015, Sobre la vida breve de cualquier paraíso (“About the fleeting life of any paradise”), 400 Elefantes, Nicaragua, 2017.  A bilingual collection: The Net in Sight/La red ante los ojos, Rascacielos, Quito, Ecuador, 2015. A bilingual plaquette: Astronomía de un sueño/Astronomy of a Dream, Carmina in minima, Barcelona, 2013.  His translations have been published in Modern Poetry in Translation and other literary journals.  Selected and translated into Spanish Los hijos de Whitman – Poesía norteamericana en el siglo XXI (“Whitman’s Children—U.S. Poetry in the XXIst Century), Valparaíso, México, 2017, a sample of 109 contemporary poets.  Writes political essays and opinions in news media and on his own blog [“Ciudadano X”].  His poetry has appeared in numerous digital and print magazines around the world, and has been translated into Italian, Greek, Romanian, Estonian, and Arabic.