Poetry

Reuters photo

By

Alejandro Escudé

Fire and Fury

The mind works as fast as the missile-scrawl across the hemisphere, a dream of circumnavigating the poles,

making sure the math checks out. Just as I did in sixth grade; those multiplication tables that were the center of the world. It will check out. There’s nothing

unaccounted for, especially when it comes to power and resistance, the kind

of power that is tasteless. I remember my childhood Korean friend who let me play with his robot toys you couldn’t

buy here in the early eighties. They were so intricate and solid and I loved the rapid script of Hangul on the impossibly bright robot boxes. The Korean boy kept his toys immaculate. And though we couldn’t speak to one another we spoke to one another and I also clearly understood his lovely, non-English speaking mother who fed me cereal and rice in that tiny, yet unstained apartment where we sometimes played and ate in utter silence, the laughter of two young boys pealing into the sky where there were no boundaries except the ones they made in mad scribblings that only concerned furious people.

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.