Two Poems
by Nathan Xavier Osorio
Overtime
I’m assured that on the devil’s ridge
I’ll understand my trek out from the valley.
I’m assured that from some vistas
you can still find the language in the fly’s transit
across the orange sun. I’m assured that soon
my number will be up and that the butcher,
with the pink bloom on his white smock, will invite me
to begin to live, to undock my petite’s damned ship
which rolls in the harbor, the mystique of lies
gathering in a cloud of gnats over its tilted mast,
swirling to cover the sun in the smokey dawn.
Growl or no growl, I can’t do this alone.
I can’t bend myself into the knots demanded by industry,
into the forgetfulness that it takes to unhear the puma’s cry,
into the dementia of time folding in on itself,
like a thick sludge poured into our hollowing cave.
Sweetheart, embrace me as l get old.
I can hardly hold the weight of it anymore.
13 More American Landscapes,
a View-Master Reel
White boys
and their pink-nosed
hunting dog
–
Six coyotes hanging
by their tails
–
U.S. flag flying over
Roswell, New Mexico
–
The Liberty Bell’s fissure
–
All the buffalo ever shot
from moving trains
–
The exchanging crates
of bananas for ammunition
–
Signed studio photo
of Lucille Ball and the Latin Lover,
Desi Arnaz
–
The U.S.-Mexican border wall
puncturing the Pacific
–
Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo
–
Interior of No. 11 Factory,
Buick Automobile Plant,
Flint, Michigan
–
Country Living’s
42 Easy Casserole Recipes
and a pine green fondue pot
fireside
–
The daily discarding
of bodies
–
A brown boy
and a pink-nosed
hunting dog
Nathan Xavier Osorio is the son of a Mexican grocer and Nicaraguan nurse. His chapbook, The Last Town Before the Mojave, was selected by Oliver De la Paz as a recipient for the Poetry Society of America's 2021 Chapbook Fellowship. His poetry, translations, and essays have also appeared in BOMB, The Offing, Boston Review, Public Books, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. His writing and teaching has been supported by fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, The Kenyon Review, and Poetry Foundation. He is currently a PhD candidate in Literature and Creative/Critical Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.