This poetry collection defines itself as a visceral and direct journey inspired by the raw inheritance of the Beat Generation. The book explores the shadows of anxiety, origins, and family breakdown as forces of change for shedding skin and identity.
At Zenda we reproduce five poems from Transmutación (Maclein y Parker), by Isaac Álvarez Félix.
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Artifacts that Explode
the misery of the eternal
and the thermometer
gnawed mercury, struck down
toilet poems
portraits of my father
the intangibility of waiting
the color of peas, the moon
by day the cluster bombs
the chips and the gift colonies
artifacts that explode when embraced
swirls of plasteline, veils
windowsless, garden furniture
fairs’ werewolves
wandering
that roar along the roads
pinatas
cotton
candles made of wax verses
stews without mornings and honey bowls
artifacts that explode when embraced
your body by night
my hands of a child
drunk
tentacle oracle
the impossible waiting
paths of oil scorched by the sun
the rage
the gluttony
the envy
grasshoppers with bone-olive crutches
black
very black
artifacts that explode when embraced
my blood your sap, time
that dies between two birds, the nests
on balconies the pinecones the rats
the steam of ships that no longer sail
the pyramids the livers the butterflies
the corpses that spring from the pillow
the children the house the pool
the sound of rain on the glass
perhaps the problem is the origin perhaps
my body is the culprit perhaps everything
it’s chemistry nuclei atoms protons
that flee that transmute that spill
into the void of my existence and everything
what I want all I love all I attempt
explodes before that inescapable truth
that no one dares confess to me
***
Gold to Lead
before the stone father I am green
I advance into his disappointment
I discover his fear
I receive the disheartenment
and I become stone
before
before the stone father I lay ships
I fire bullets, I sculpt poses
as a villain, a mute frog, a gentle winter
and I become
stone in front of the stone father
before the father
of stone I am a crystal boy, a case
an incongruous mass of unfulfilled desires
a folly
someone who does not grow
I am stone
I am stone in front of the stone father
a huge stone wrapped in mud
that cracks with the croak of vultures
a stone
huge and solitary, invisible
to the human eye
invisible to the eye
before the stone father I am stone
***
And the Word Was Made Flesh and Dwelt Among Us
I die
they care for me, wash me, clothe me
they dress me, tuck me in
they adorn me, wrap me up
they guide me, kissing me, pushing
they throw me, watch me
surveilled, crying for me
suffering me, they question me, me
they ask, they do not understand me
skewered, they expel me, forget me
they erase me, I go, erase me (erase me)
I transmute
I root, I bind, I entangle
I grease myself, I hurl myself
I script a spell; I silver myself
I equip myself, reveling, I sea-swell
I color myself, I peacock myself
unraveled, I jolt around
glucosify myself, I cheat myself
I sharpen myself, I do not waver
I anchor myself, I harden, I hammer
they erase me, I go, want me (want me)
I illuminate
***
Pure Anxiety
to have at the bottom
of the bottom a chasm, a button
of panic, ready and bright
on the verge
of blowing everything skyward
at any moment, for example now
to bear the tremor
as sharp as a crystal, the dream
the liquid of a bear, a cat
dissected in the living room
all that premise of being
a blind forest, a futile challenge
a barefoot centipede
a tear
in the corduroy pants a river
full of corpses and wooden fish
to have hunger out of time
the light of a cave and the creases of chambers
in the pockets drink from the hollow
of their hands seek poems
that approach my way of crying
to all that we dance to their eyes
and to the flowers
to thirst for puddles, to crave
to do anything other than die
and do it now
***
First Law of Thermodynamics
there exists an image-world, a mirror world
isomeric beneath the skin
that betrays every misstep
every listening, every response, everything
all that was never spoken, a landfill
of filth shining as pure reality
I look at myself and discover the crystal
soft, static; my fingers
upon fingers that do not belong to me
the gaze of another, the color-shade, the lagoon
poisoned with groves
I dissociate
in the vertigo of waiting
I grow impatient
to uncover the ultimate, inescapable ending
that would rot everything
that arrives riding a cart
with wings of fire and a donkey for a steed
I launch myself
into the abyss of the most catastrophic truth
my energy neither creates nor destroys
my body neither creates nor destroys
my essence neither creates nor destroys
my blood my chest my fear my madness
neither are created nor destroyed
nor do they transform
I simply transmute
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Author: Isaac Álvarez Félix. Title: Transmutation. Publisher: Maclein y Parker. Sales: All Your Books.
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