BIO
Diego Guerra-Fleitas is a graduate student at Dartmouth College studying Comparative Literature. A passionate student and participant of poetry, he only began submitting poetry in late 2019. He is currently based in Hanover, New Hampshire but lives most of the year in Miami, Florida with extended family.
Santiago
I
sing from a cut canoe in psalms
that
once were sung by ghosts
within
my cracked-kettle ancient bones.
The
sugar cane, it flutes dulcet notes,
A
coral so crimson puckers its fingers
to
tickle cerulean-breakered boats.
My
oar creaked like an anxious singer
below
the salty water, and white
foam
flecked my blackened beard with slaver.
Deep
sadness, fathoms of ire and spite
further
spurred the splintering hull
on
to split seas cyan by dawn’s light.
The
heralding horn of the mourning gull
swept
the sand, shook the hulls hungry
for
onslaughts of waves and salt.
Santiago’s
soul, slanted and angry,
Paced
the deck, swayed to that moan
and
burned like an infernal foundry.
Longing
brought low his bones,
Erased
the sweet spears of day
prodigally
encouraging the reef at hand.
Francisco’s
hand, Santiago’s bent sigh.
“And
on your shoulder palms I place,”
He
laughed, but saw I was to cry.
“If
love for a girl, silken-waisted
and
soft to caress plagues you now,
Withdraws
your love of life, you’ve wasted
this
our craft, stern to prow.
If
anchored by amorous lances you’ve thrown,
Why
do you choose now to bow?
Cheer
up, Santiago, you’ve grown.
The
world shall languish, long
to
prowl the remains of your imminent song.”
“¡Escucha Francisco amigo, if all along
my
aim was to cradle close
the
ones for whom I long,
I
should, but I’m not morose
for
want of friendly waves,
But
rather what I’ve lost and never known.
I
must be drunk. I rave
And
ramble like a singing mass
Of
summer coral, jaded leaves.”
Why Blue Seas
“Bitterness,” she said when on the
telephone,
“Shall drain your tinajón of better blessing,
Will spill ancestral sacrifice and waste
your gentle self.
Look, see the high heart of the man,
Pious in escape, graceful as he held the
clan
in the cramped cabin of a plane,
Never to see his father again.
The emerald scar of Camagüey remains to
you,
Dear son, lost and anxious flower.
And the mercy of motherhood,
She who three daughters in foreign earth
tended with care, that they may live,
birth
Miracle beds of orchards fresh with
orchids.
Do you now know the clay which gave your
life?”
Plumes of bright rain stain my stem.
Yes, this love for foreign flowers stays;
They are my own, as much as ones
That gird the shores of ancient seas.