Two poems by Juan Pablo Mobili

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.