“Futilities” & “Just a Butterfly”
From our Summer 2022 issue, guest edited by Jose Diego Medina.
Futilities
Oh, we sit at the tables
at the banquet and we listen
and we wait and it goes on
like a great chain, for hours
and we speak and we’re quiet
and we understand that we are all trapped,
who is tied with an undoubtedly long string,
who in lace, sharp and thin,
who awake, who nodding off
or half asleep through the moments
and can hear it all as a song
and we want, yes, we want
maybe now or maybe later
to take off for the skies
or to other far-flung spaces
as yet unknown places
somewhere we will doze all the time
and we are, so it seems
perhaps in a dream, swimming
amongst the stars and yearning
but it seems to be too late
and we let ourselves be distracted
in this hazy domain
where there is no one
where there isn’t anybody
where you are not present.
Just a Butterfly
I’m too tough on myself this time,
Carrying such a heavy burden.
It’s not my problem,
Not my business,
Why do I get in the middle?
Honestly,
I’m just—delicate,
Sunny
Just a butterfly—
Nearly bodiless.
I perform a heavenly ballet,
Floating on the wind.
Sound colors my swoops.
And I am drawn
To burning intensities
Until eventually—
I fall.
And am again
Cadaverous still
And my two legs jerk like cannons.
