Poetry

Geoff Livingston photo

By

Alejandro Escudé

Reading Joyce’s Ulysses in the Age of Trump

I can’t stop thinking of the blind young man’s tapping,

and that dandy cuckolding Bloom, the sickening sirens,

and the whole work laying over my commute, the highway,

like an exploded Church, my tires crackling over each brick,

every day like another ballad to the sun, exposed like Dedalus

buying a little milk in the morning—Comey, Yates, McCabe—

the tarpaulin, pulling, the top, the teepee, top parade, the babe

being strolled by his good mother. I listen to the seashore,

the heave and ho of the country’s nostrils, its punctured eye,

the people asking: “Who did this you?”—America responding,

“Nobody. Nobody did this to me.” His falsehoods are music,

nearly innocent and childlike. His Hamlet-breath, still speaking

to his father atop a real estate project. “I am thy father’s spirit.”

Swelling at the throat, the aria that may cast a darkened light.

Marking the long tale, I feel as if my insides were cold dust,

the heart reduced to a monologue. Where to go for lunch?

Somewhere where I won’t run into him, the world-whisperer,

the eternal flatterer, the black helicopter filled with steaks

and the stone wife, playing at odds as if we needed to believe

in her statuary. Dignam is dug and gone; his life spoken for,

the attributions, the lectures in the library, the greasy man

has passed, the barmaids giggled, the world is the world.

Alejandro Escudé

Alejandro Escudé’s first book of poems, My Earthbound Eye, was published in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.