Poetry

Reuters photo

By

Alejandro Escudé

Fatherland

The world grows inside Vladimir Putin.

It stretches within him, quickly enlarging.

Its baby beak not a beak yet, its thumbs

fleshy protrusions, and the monkey face

like an elephant’s, a see-through infant.

The world grows, a thin-thick weed,

untethered to the Coptic christ-child;

it spreads, an old, yellowed map? Putin

grins, fatherland, strides assuredly, despite

the globular growth, inspecting troops,

welcoming cosmonauts back from space.

Then, he climbs to top of his large bed,

like that queen in the children’s story who

ordered mattress stacked upon mattress.

His eyes dart toward you like a wolf-lover,

a man who’d happily deliver a world

straight to its own abortion, pincers ready,

the needle with the red drink. Our human

morals are as unexplored as the deepest

oceans—it could’ve grown to planet.

Instead, between scraps, it pulses breaths.

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.