>> This next poem is a poem about insomnia and about dogs.
For some reason insomnia is always filled with barking dogs.
I never and I never understood.
Well, now of course I understand, but it's strange how dogs write their own composition,
compose their own music and barking at night.
And one dog starts to bark and then a second dog starts to bark.
And then, a lot of dogs are barking.
And you never know if they're in your head or really in the night.
So this is about insomnia and also about cynicism,
since that dog and can cynicism comes from.
Noche cínica.
Ya noche ladran cuántos perros, ladran amarrados a su palo de astillas,
ladran con los brincos de gato, sobre la mata seca, el crujido de ramas bajo la uña.
Ladran con el silbido, ladran a jalones rasgando la madera.
Ladran por la noche bajo el árbol enjuto.
Ladran, pienso mientras oigo despierta.
Ladran porque no se calló el segundo, por voluntad de orden,
por no segar el círculo de hocicos en coro.
Porque si uno se detiene, ya nunca culminaría quizás el rito erizado.
Pelo contra reja.
De ese tiempo en que no duermo cuando hay perros de más en mi cabeza y uno afuera en el hambre.
Aunque tal vez nazca de otra visión su cautela, el gruñido de fondo,
la gutural colmillo adentro, tripa vacua, ¿a qué viene con la calle sucia?
¿a retribuirme con su historia de cuerpo inerte cuatro patas a mi puerta, su racimo de moscas,
la noche incluida como un episodio de tanto perro múltiple que seguirá semana tras semana,
y así hasta el final, parte de un método, etcétera, perro en perro,
ladrando, mordiendo que incluso duele?
>> These poems we've been reading after Nieve which is of course
in the Kore Press book How Light Is Built, these poems are from a manuscript,
selected poems that we've been working on together for quite some time
and that we hope to bring out soon.
And this poem Night Cynical, we had the pleasure of having it published in Terrain.org,
a wonderful journal, the journal of built and natural environments and Simmons,
who is the editor of that journal is here today.
So I just want to say thank you, Simmons.
We appreciate it.
Wonderful journal, Terrain.org.
You know where to find it.
Night, Cynical.
At night, they bark.
So many dogs, they bark tied to the splintered post.
They bark at the cat's leap, on the dry shrub, branches crackling under claws.
They bark at whistles.
They bark at their stakes, ripping wood.
They bark all night under the withered tree.
They bark, I think, as I listen wide awake because the second dog could not keep quiet,
because of rage for order, because they will not break the circle, the choir of muzzles.
Because if one of them stops, it may never culminate the bristling rite, fur against fence.
In those hours, when I do not sleep, when there are too many dogs in my head and one outside
in hunger, although maybe this caution springs from another vision, deepest growl, fanged,
guttural, empty gut, why is it here on this dirty street?
To pay me back with its story of a motionless body, four paws at my door,
its cluster of flies, the night included as one more episode.
So many dogs week after week and so on until the very end, part of a method, etcetera.
Dog after dog, barking, biting, hurting, even?