three poems
by Damon Hubbs
Tropicália
Before M_____ taped a banana to the wall
we painted with cocaine
cool heat, supra-sensorial, rivulets of violets.
You won the pull-up competition in Heather’s apartment
and whatever the chef decides today
leaves cherry blossoms on the rug. Stay close to nature
it never fails. Angels, or
sex —on the other hand. We shout
alas egad goodbye, sail to Anatolia
watch old spy films through a porthole:
anemones in Oxford shirts
allamanda mop top, Brazilian Dutchman’s pipe;
John doing jiu jitsu in the kitchen
Heather with her talk of Nietzschean sheep
and Republican wives,
drunk on girlie drinks with left-wing dissidents.
Swimming in blue gold
we bob for apples.
My dossier says it’s forbidden to forbid.
I hear the brushstrokes
of your heart
and it’s as yellow as an origami bird.
Maybe a macaw, I don’t know—
all the furtive folded paper wraps
of Columbian bam bam
have me picking at your cuticle like an aphid.
The room is nests and hammocks,
an arabesque of red machinery.
There are so many unanswered questions
for example
why are your eyes like a rainy day in Riga?
USS Orizaba
Oh to live like this, in obsessive ideal
until the world drops off its last letter,
who knows what goes on in your head, Emil
if the propeller doesn’t grind me up
the sharks will— that’s what the captain says.
Dearest, in the Gulf of Mexico
the water is as blue as cinema
and the sky like a filet lace pattern of Joan of Arc,
even now I’m falling apart.
I try to go for walks but think of white elevators
and what it means to be contemporary,
and the high interiors of the sea
are like a hollow wrist playing a black tambourine.
Yes, all the ships go the wrong way.
I don’t think I’ll do anything so important for a long time
as wear a pair of blue pajamas
and read The Ballad of Reading Gaol,
300 miles to Cuba
from my bed and board and rarely sober
lovely confusion requires an active curiosity
where do I go from here, tilting out
into the waves
step by step, then out of breath.
Mutants
It’s Bread and Circus night
when the military police storm the eatery
and break all the eggs.
I’m asleep over lines from Vallejo
and you’re talking to Kristin about the end of history
and Sorbonne graffiti, how the two work
in harmony like orange blossom
honey cake. So many strange currencies
briefly burning, bat macumba.
I’m a little woozy from communing
with the men in Mao caps
to say nothing of your parrot Saint Ernesto
who shits like La Mancha Negra
all over my peach silk shirt.
O, yes. Something is amiss with Ernesto
and the linen vendor says
me cago en todo lo que se menea.
Let’s go to the cinema, you say.
Let’s free the tiger from the neighbor’s yard.
Too bad we fuck
like adult contemporary.
Why was I so careless with the boots.
Your husband, like the State, is the chilliest of monsters.
Now the bird sings with a gun to its head
while we play bocce ball and talk financial boons.
So there we are in the brutality garden
belly tanked with the juggler and Brazilian aerialist
who Kristin swears is really a pink dolphin
that’s been transformed into a handsome young man,
going so far as to knock the hat off his head
one June party to prove he has a blowhole,
and there, sure enough, we survey
the disaster.
Photo of Damon Hubbs
BIO: Damon Hubbs is a poet from New England. He's the author of the full-length collection Venus at the Arms Fair (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). He has also published four poetry chapbooks, The Day Sharks Walk on Land, Coin Doors & Empires, Charm of Difference, and The Railroad Poems. His work has recently appeared in Revolution John, BRUISER, Apocalypse Confidential, Farewell Transmission, The Gorko Gazette, and others. Damon's poems have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net.