"Mexicans Lost in Mexico" by Nico Amador

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend January 7, 2019   Mexicans Lost in Mexico   Nico Amador

it was summer and time circled itself like a swarm of gnats                                       like the pink-topped taxis rounding the glorieta              if only for the sake of inertia,                                      we were standing in foreign desert the days of the week slid by, uncapitalized            my grandfather forever trapped in the picture                                      where he pretends to play the guitar a serenade for tourists and lovers with new rules between them                         our occupation: to look and not touch at some point we could no longer tell if it was the clouds we were                 looking at                         or the building reflecting the clouds                                                  all epigraphs came pre-assigned the beautiful thing about this story was that it happened                        we didn't see the floating gardens                                                             and I don't remember the art    only the symmetry of a blue wall, a momentary breeze                                      there were parrots, I think, or peacocks?                                                       there were birds            Copyright © 2019 Nico Amador. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "About ten years ago, I was traveling in Mexico with two lovers of mine as our time together was nearing its inevitable conclusion. This poem, which is part of a longer narrative series that I started in my chapbook Flower Wars, explores my sense of dislocation within that experience and within the memory itself; the imprint left behind that is both acute and incomplete. The title of the poem is borrowed from a section of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives and the embedded epigraph is a line from Eileen Myles's Chelsea Girls." —Nico Amador   Nico Amador is the author of Flower Wars (Newfound Press, 2017), selected as the winner of the Anzaldúa Poetry Prize. He lives in rural Vermont. Poetry by Amador   Flower Wars (Newfound Press, 2017) "Why Seek the Dead among the Living?" by Jennifer Atkinson "Strictly Speaking" by David Rivard "Oxymoronic Love" by Jennifer Militello January Guest Editor: TC Tolbert   Thanks to TC Tolbert, author of Gephyromania (Ahsahta Press, 2014), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Tolbert about their curating approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038