"Take the City In" and "This Quiet Night"

by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozabal

Take the City In

I take the city in
and leave the past behind.
I walk from the workplace’s
sticks and stones and I go
to a place of leisure.
I keep it together.
The city does not turn
its back on me.  The trees
provide shade as the sun
becomes intense.  The sea
of heads walk past me as
if I did not exist.
This does not bother me.
The city knows my name.
 

This Quiet Night

Pensive on this quiet night.
I sit in a corner of a room;
The city no longer alive;
The air whispers faintly.
It is a strange air, like if it
wants to tell me things.
It is circling unlike a vulture.
 
The house wants some
conversation or a song
to fill its spaces.  The night
remains quiet.  I discover
a certain jealousy. 
I love how quiet it is.
I offer the house the air
and its whispers.  But
the house is bitter,
like if it wants a party.
It remains sullen and cold.
 
The quiet night soothes me.
It seems the house feels
more alone than me.
I knock on the wall to
acknowledge its needs
and then I blast the stereo.

 

 

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in West Covina, CA, works in Los Angeles County, and is the author of Raw Materials (Pygmy Forest Press). His poetry, prose, and art has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Escape Into Life, Nerve Cowboy, Triggerfish, and Yellow Mama Magazine. His broadsides, chapbooks and poetry books have appeared in Alternating Current Press, Deadbeat Press, Four Feathers Press, Kendra Steiner Editions, New American Imagist, New Polish Beat, Poet's Democracy, Rogue Wolf Press, and Ten Pages Press. Luis recommends St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

 

Edited for Unlikely by Jonathan Penton, Editor-in-Chief
Last revised on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - 23:25