Robert
Fernandez (USA)
1980
1980
Robert
Fernandez was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up in Miami. He is the
author of the poetry volumes We Are
Pharaoh, Pink Reef, and Scarecrow.
He is also co-translator of Azure, poems by Stéphane Mallarmé in 2015. His poems have appeared in Hambone, Lana Turner, The New Republic, Poetry, A Public Space, Bennington Review, The Nation and elsewhere. He is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Gertrude Stein Awards, the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poet Awards, and the Andrew W. Mellon foundation. He has been an editor for Cosa Nostra Editions and the PEN Poetry Series.
He currently teaches poetry in Nebraska.
BOOKS OF POETRY
We Are Pharaoh (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Canarium Books, 2011); Pink Reef (Ann Arbor: Canarium Books 2013); Scarecrow (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2015)
Tongue Out (Beginning with a Line by the Painter Francis Bacon)
I like the dog; it looks
As
if it’s just lying there,
As though it’s had a really good run, exhausted,
And
you see it with its tongue out…
And I was prone, exhausted,
As
if I’d had a rug of sweat rolled out of me.
And I was prone and near dead,
On
the razor’s lip of sleep,
As if a rug of gold thread,
Bought
for half a million in a mall in Dubai,
Had been rolled out of me
Across
a length of polished tile.
And I was exhausted, like a dog
That
had been flattened, eyes squashed flat—
Flat as the huge, smashed toads
That
scatter the roads in Florida.
I was exhausted,
As
if I’d burned through my money,
As if I’d drunk deeply at the roulette wheel
And
bathed in its multicolored fogs,
As if I’d sweated through my shirt
Next
to the colossal
Stones of the casino fireplace.
I
was exhausted,
As if Malory after a raid blood-shearing
Through
coin and bleating sheep,
As if the lamprey
Had
stood
Over my shoulder, reading
Aeschylus,
As if the pandemic had started
And
I had eaten death,
White paste from a clay bowl,
For
years.
I was exhausted,
Like
a dog after a good run,
Flattened, laid flat,
Beside
his master.
—Originally published in A Public Space
Edens
Let us live a long life
Among
clothes lines and bats’ grasp,
Fleshy
twig grip,
Or
kites, how we love
Their—too
false to say—
Their
dance with nothing;
How
we love, rather, their clarity
That
falls, skin that dissolves.
Every image of transcendence
Comes
in a white marble block
Within
which a bat is fixed
Like
Satan himself
At
the bottom of Dis.
And our three bearded heads
Garble
dead cacti,
Wrinkled
worm and caramel
Wrapped
in foil.
Hold. Begin again
Where
your face
Is
a shield.
There, you are like kites.
But
it’s false to say
We
are flat and fleet—;
We
are, rather, red steaks
Falling
into a pan
Under
raw moonlight,
Whitest
of moonlight
Behind
which the void
Gnashes.
Still. We are
The
ark’s reeling tower.
And
how I love the ancient sky,
Purple,
god-soaked, of faceted
Silver
and phosphorus white.
Nothing’s
the pit
You
expel from your stomach.
And
the dia-
mond, fleshy
Only in its negation
Only in its negation
Of
all flesh,
Slips
from your mouth
Into
the pan.
Speak. Eden,
Your
rain
Is
cut wrong—
The
giraffes
Bend
sideways for their meals
Of
leaves and flowers;
The
baboons
Shuttle
their skulls
On
their backs.
And the day is trees
wind
smoke soil
grass
rock shit
sickness
death
animals
animals
sun
The day prints our eyes;
The
press of type
Falls
into the flesh;
Our
eyes are
Tired
of reading;
They
are scarred.
Eden
Is
a scar too,
A
laughing slit of mouth
Lined
with black, shining fruit.
The baboons stretch their jaws and sleep.
The rivers travel until they do not.
The insects grip, multiply, and descend.
We are fortunate if we find
Some
measure,
Because
every day I see
A
god bathing in the river,
Blood
streaming from its mouth.
Let us
Split
open
Our
stomachs
With
the unicorn’s
Horn.
Let us
Spill
warm
Platefulls
of guts,
Pinkish
things
Picked
at.
Magisterial vultures,
Wings
the size of children,
Extend
themselves
Over
pink plates.
Yes.
O gods. Fall.
Fall
still. Remember us.
That noon, highest point—
But
a fork of little bone
Breaks
from the dancer’s throat.
Still I love the beauty of these serpent colors.
And
I love the dancers
With
their naked feet.
And I love
The
dancers
Who
love the light,
Who
unfold the light into the light,
Who
bring the light to itself in witness.
—Originally published in THERMOS
For
a brief introduction to his work by Robyn Schiff and a selection of poems, go
here:
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