Watching the News
Facts precipitate
like summer rains
and risk drowning
what nudged this poem
to begin
dreaming,
to be celebrated someday.
There are children
who were murdered
and parents who may not rise past
unbearable old griefs,
buried under reams
of statistics,
and the meticulous notes
of dutiful reporters.
This poem is at risk
of being blacklisted
for failing to be accurate,
but all it wants is
to speak
of the beauty of this world
without hiding its ugliness, beauty
more memorable
than scars.
Las Golondrinas
“Golondrinas con fiebre en las alas”
Alfredo Le Pera
I was sung the tango
of the swallows with fever in their wings,
at bedtime,
by my father,
his idea of a soothing lullaby,
his impenetrable hypothesis
of fatherhood,
and I dreamed
I was made of
crude metaphor
swallows
and my father’s voice.
“Las Golondrinas” was also published in Adelaide Magazine.
Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires, and adopted by New York. His poems appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, The Worcester Review, Thimble Magazine, Otoliths (Australia) Impspired (UK), and Bosphorus Review of Books (Turkey) among others. His work received an Honorable Mention from the International Human Rights Art Festival, and nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net, in 2020 and 2021. His chapbook, Contraband , was published this year.