Noah Cicero is a poet and a storyteller born in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1980. He is a prominent figure of the alt lit scene and a fierce critic of capitalism, a theme that has occupied the bulk of his narrative and essay work. Among his most representative books are the novels The Human War (2003), The Condemned (2006) and Go to Work and Do Your Job. Care for Your Children. Pay Your Bills. Obey the Law. Buy Products. (2013), as well as the essay Blood-Soaked Buddha, Hard Earth Pascal (2021). Bipolar Cowboy (2015) is his first poetry collection, followed in 2018 by Nature Documentary. In our country, the publisher Pale Fire published works by the author such as Pórtate bien (2015). In 2025 the Argentine publisher Zindo&Gafuri released the poetry book Cowboy bipolar with selections by Kurt Folch. We present a selection of his poetic work with translations by Eduardo Savino and Jesús Carmona Robles.
***
Mom on the Stone Path
When I was a kid,
there was a stone path
in the Ohio of broad leaves
in the Ohio of the abandoned steel plant
in the Ohio of the Chevrolet factory
where my mom worked.
She worked the shift
from three to eleven.
I never saw her after school,
nor before school, really.
I made breakfast by myself.
There were nights when I couldn’t sleep
until her car rolled
along the long path
until I heard the sound of the stones.
Until I understood that she had arrived,
that she was home with me.
Then I fell asleep,
but now I sleep alone.
And the stones don’t sound.
To all the women I loved
now they love others.
At 11:45 at night I try to listen
to the cars, even if it’s just the tires
turning on the smooth pavement.
When I hear the sound
that I am looking for,
I tell myself that it’s you,
that you’re at home,
and I fall asleep.
***
Somehow
From time to time, I don’t know
whether you people are really human, I know you are
human, I mean, you don’t walk on all fours and wear
clothes. (But sometimes, when people undress, I don’t know if it’s human
and I get confused, which is why I no longer go to cabarets, nor have sex).
How did you become people? How
did you learn to arrive at work on time
and do what your boss tells you, how
did you learn to pay attention to the details. There’s an ad
on Craiglist for a data-entry job that says: We’re looking
for someone who is really prepared to start a career
and worry about the work they do every day.
Is the ad even telling you what the company makes? How the hell could it matter
to you, anyway, when you start working?
How do you become a person?
Generally, instead of looking for a job,
I listen to music on YouTube, instead of being
a person, I try to become the notes of the songs,
the harmonic structure of the Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow
version by Amy Winehouse; I want to become that song, I learn
the song on guitar and tear the chords up in my adobe patio,
I try to be something not human, sometimes I try to become
the taste of a Carl’s Jr. hamburger, I want to be
so tasty, so damaging to you.
Sometimes I listen to Amitabha chants,
Navajo chants, even old
hymns from the Kentucky Baptist Church, I want
to be a pure feeling that can reach the heavens,
but instead I am Noah Cicero, sometimes I shout, no one
can control me, no one can tame me, because
I don’t know what to be.
When I see an antelope from the car, far
north of Nevada, near the Walker River reservation. I don’t know
what to be: in antelope, the person who sees the antelope, the grass
the antelope eats, what the person feels when
they see the antelope, what the person feels in antelope while
the antelope eats the grass, so I try to be all things
and I realize
that I’m only wind that spins and spins and it’s okay and
not okay
and everything will land, something is straightening out, but
it never settles, and everything everything everything returns, and the wind
that stirs the palm tree leaves, the hum of insects and
me trying to find a job on Craiglist.
***
Sorry
Sorry
to the girl from Poland,
to the girl from Seattle,
to the Philippines wife-by-mail.
And even to the Romanian stalker:
I can’t love you;
you seem very cool,
almost a little funny.
But my heart, my brain
and even my penis still protest
on behalf of another; they keep singing old songs.
Perhaps one day, without me noticing,
someone slips into my heart: I have just imagined
my heart in the desert, maybe in Death Valley.
Where the dunes are, a rattlesnake comes
to my heart, bites it
and injects its venom.
***
Questions We Ask People Who Do Not Want to Hear These Questions
When will you love me again?
Why did you never love me?
What happened to all those feelings?
Is there nothing I can do?
Is disappointment how you show affection?
Did you ever want me near you?
Why do I need to hear you say “say it”?
Why did you hit me? Was I your child?
Why did you neglect me? Was I your child?
30,000 years ago bison roamed the prairies.
A buffalo tripped over the trunk of a dead tree.
It fell hard, broke its ankle. The buffalo looked at its friends.
It tried to reach them. The sound of hooves, but it fell dead.
The buffalo, there on the ground, asks, “Why did you leave me behind? I thought you liked me.”
A pack of wolves arrived, they gnawed him. The buffalo
cried out in his agony.
***
Happy Dogs
It is at the AWP in Los Angeles, where writers
from all over the United States gather.
People end up meeting one another.
Whenever he looks at her, every time she looks at him.
He gets drunk, she smokes marijuana for
the sensitivity of the Asian gene toward alcohol.
Then they can embrace. His arm,
wrapping around her small body. They will fall
asleep very soon.
After the guy leaves the girl,
(I don’t know why I keep calling them
boy and girl, they’re both in their thirties,
they’re serious people,
they’re somewhat famous,
they’ve been to other continents,
they’ve paid a lot of bills,
they’ve even skipped some. But it feels good,
sometimes, to feel back in high school,
nervous, still afraid of the genitals.)
He got into his friend’s car,
they went to Sunset Blvd. They were headed
for shrimp tacos.
His friend asked, “Why don’t you marry her?”
The boy recalled three other people
who asked, “Why don’t you marry her?”
The boy in the back seat replied,
“Everyone tells me to marry her.
I think no one tells her to marry me.”
The boy and the girl never married.
It was the fault of both of them.
They never let it happen. They had the best excuses.
And although both died alone somewhere
In the American desert. (The American desert
Is big enough to keep them apart.)
They both had a few dogs during their lives.
The dogs loved the attention they got,
The dogs led happy lives, and died
peacefully, being hugged
by their owners.
***
Jesus Christ in Wal-Mart
Noah Cicero went to Wal-Mart
to get a prescription.
As he walked through Wal-Mart
he began to notice the fatigue brought on
by the morning anxiolytic.
He thought of suicide,
not to the extent of killing himself, but
if a magical wind had lifted him
and carried him to a sky
over the moon of Europe, he would not have
resisted.
Among those products walked a man with prison tattoos,
brown teeth and a shirt
with holes.
The man wasn’t fashionable, probably
didn’t know what American Apparel was
nor could he manage an operating system. Certainly
his house was dirty, probably
he had never bathed, ever.
He said: “Hey”
Noah turned around: “Me?”
“Yes, you, Jesus Christ told me
you needed help”
Noah did not say a word.
The man tried to encircle Noah
with his arm, but Noah spoke in a nervous voice: “Please,
don’t touch me.”
The man with the brown teeth
said: “It’s not a big deal, soon everything will get better.”
Noah replied:
“What a horror,
this feels like a nightmare.”
The man with the brown teeth
looked Noah in the eyes and said:
“Everything will be fine.”
Noah wanted to shout:
“But the pain is in my head
and I can’t get out
of my head.”
The man left
and returned
to his dirty floor.
Noah Cicero sat in the car,
with sad eyes, he said:
“Am I really that sad?”, remembering
all those who had tried to help him
in the last six months: Bernice, John, Wanda,
Nicky, Sara, Haley, Cameron, Keegan, Mani,
Paulina, Asia, Dana, Samantha, etc., etc.
But nothing worked:
Noah was so fucked up
that even Jesus had to send a guy
with brown teeth to tell him
that his depression had to end.
He put his hands on his temples
and said: “please stop
please stop please stop
this noise”