Poetry
Octavio Quintanilla
Drawing Blood
It’s invisible thresholds that time
traverses, not you.
This is why first you draw a clock
floating in the air; on the table,
a bottle of wine.
Then an eyelid sketched by bitterness,
eyelash; the rest of the face,
unrecalled.
You want it to be your father’s,
his broken jaw, the thin lips
you’ve heard so much about.
Like true suffering, he’s beyond
representation, outside
of language. Out of all
your soccer games and the first fistfight
you lost.
When you try to draw him, you return
to the house where you’re always
a child. Where you have an absent enemy
whose life you save in your thoughts
and then condemn again.
This time, you want it all
to end in fire.
And because you have no need of it,
you also want to toss
the word murder
into the serrated flames.
This time, you’ll not be alone:
A loaf of bread next to the bottle of wine.
Your mother’s soft hands resting on the table.
