Octavio Quintanilla

Poetry

from

If I Go Missing

(Slough Press, 2015)

 

 

 

[Through plaster walls I hear the wailing]

 

Through plaster walls I hear the wailing

Of my neighbor in pain.

She casts her screams like fishing nets

Over the night’s undertow.

I want to say a prayer,

But the words clog

At the root of my tongue.

Dios te salve, Maria…

I imagine someone is with her,

Taking her hand,

Soaking her forehead

With a wet towel.

Maybe her daughter,

Or her son,

Anyone brave enough to nudge

Her lips with drops of water.

I imagine someone enters my room

And keeps me from falling off the bed.

But someone is always falling.

Our first grief is what sets our house on fire.
By this light, we travel

Across the wire of the night.

 

first published in Strike Magazine

 

 

 

A Man and His Dogs

 

This morning the man who died two years ago

was feeding his dogs.

He was patient and the smaller pup

came up and licked his hand.

 

I called out to him as you slept.

He came to my window, his dogs

followed him, wagging their tongues with joy,

rubbing their fur coats against his legs.

 

When you opened your eyes, I wanted

to tell you that getting lost is possibility.

Tell you, from now on if I say sadness

it means I am driving and I know

exactly where I am going.

 

I began to tell you, “Do you remember

the man who lived…” Then I stopped

when I saw you stretch your body with a yawn

as if announcing to the world

you had just been born.

 

first published in Naugatuck Literary Review

 

 

 

Fugitive

 

Your wife’s sweet distances.

Where are they?

          Last night you slept next to her.

The sensual striptease

          of the moon gushed

through a sliver

                   of open curtain.

At that hour,

          you wanted to be water

                   drinking itself, not water

afraid of freezing.

In that quiet,

          a greater mind couldn’t finish

the abandoned project

                   you became.

You’re driving now

          through another

Texas town,

                   dust holding things in place

like a rib cage.

The light,

                   hard as granite.

 

first published in American Poetry Journal

 

 

 

Corpse Fauna, Frontera

 

1

 

Here, a stove is luxury.

An indoor toilet.

A cup of clean water.

 

2

 

Elsewhere, black heart

of the festering fruit.

White grin of flies.

Body hanging from a bridge.

 

3

 

Here, second hand shoes.

Horse’s dry prepuce.

 

4

 

Elsewhere, dinner:

fist of hair.

 

5

 

Elsewhere, head full of lice.

Blow flies forcing the mouth to open.

 

first published in Midway Journal

 

 

 

Mal de Ojo

         

Toward evening 

When I grow bored

I try to imagine my killer — Novica Tadić, “Toward Evening”

 

The evil eye was born at the same time as light.

Let there be light,

and the good eye became full of it,

like a lung is filled by air.

All countries on earth must suffer its presence.

Its gaze has followed me

to this city,

and as I drive to work, I can’t help

but think about my murderer

who is strong enough to wrestle me

to the trunk of a car

and take me on a journey

only a nightmare can devise.

If only we could see the evil hiding in the eye,

see a rat’s skull shaping the pupil,

the glimmer of a sharpened ax

instead of an iris.

I wonder, as the traffic

comes to a halt,

who will notify those who wait for me

at the table of disheartenment,

who will knock at the door,

stutter my name.

 

first published in Salamander

 

 

Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014). His work has appeared in DM, Salamander,  RHINO,  Alaska Quarterly Review,  Southwestern  American Literature,  The Texas Observer,  and elsewhere. He is a Canto Mundo Fellow and is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review. He teaches Literature and Creative Writing in the M.A./M.F.A. program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, TX. You can follow him on Twitter @OctQuintanilla