Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal


In the Mouth of the Sea

After Federico Garcia Lorca


The fishes glisten,

fishermen listen,

for the blood

and the song

of the sea and

sun’s reflection

on the waves.


The startling verses,

the siren’s curses,

take hold of

fishermen,

who intently

listen, who fall

in the spell.


Hook, line, sinker,

they fall deeper,

in the mouth

of the sea,

fishermen, blind

like love, who

can blame them?





So Alive 

After Bauhaus’ song Dive


So alive

like moths going into the light

Kamikaze love

like moths making the last dive

Insects swoon

going full speed into the light


In the subterranean world

Molotov cocktails are the weapon of choice

A train in vain falls off the tracks

A necromantic brings back all the dead

and stitches up the living

Fingers are stripped off their fingerprints

for identity concealment; beware of

dead ringers who assume your life


On Monkey Paw Road you get five wishes

and K-Mart blue specials go on for hours

Dragon claws help us tunnel our way

to the underworld and open the magic door

where we tangle with the sumo wrestler

and dance to Bauhaus and Pussy Galore

with fishnet leatherette toothless zombies


in the dive bar from hell

as we get down, down, down

We go down, down, down

We get down, down, down





Footprints 


I was looking at my footprints.

I was looking at my shoes.

The footprints did not seem to match.

They might have belonged to a fish,

or a flamingo, a minotaur, 

or a three-legged dog.


I gazed at a cricket jumping in

my footprints. It seemed to 

be wearing a tux. My footprints 

filled with rain and the tender 

cricket fled. A scream from a

nearby bush altered my senses.


A cow with a pair of shoes walked 

out of the bush. A cow with a

little girl’s voice walked in 

footprints. It was a mad cow.



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