Poetry

Reuters photo

By

Alejandro Escudé

At the Carnicería

Their faces levitate. They’re above the weather,

meaning the stones and the rough-wind-shaken trees.

They pose as if for a Christmas picture,

a collection of four Presidential couples, two missing

their spouses, a false family, distant to my present task:

to choose from a variety of cuts, meats like the countenances

on the picture I spotted on my cellphone, each one with more

or less veins of fat on them, some fresher than others,

sliced raw, carved, preserved on the bone— at the Carnicería,

meat shop in Spanish, where an old man stands too close to me.

Nearly stepping on my feet, his Arctic blue eyes

fixed straight ahead. Is he in a hurry to order? Did I beat him

to the punch? He appears extraordinarily fit, but his head, old-

skull old, exhibits a jaw like two joined lobster claws. His blue eyes

the same color, after the world war, that was popularly

attributed as the hue of Nazi officers’ eyes. Then,

the old man stands stiflingly close to me at the checkout;

then, he nearly rams my car as I pull out. I let him have

the right of way, and he glares at me for what seems

an eternity with those killer’s eyes.

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.