By Alexis López Paleo
The bed is nothing more than the culmination of all efforts,
true and dishonest.
The covers on the floor a clear sign of surrender,
the submission to (the lack of) faith and motley bodies.
Here
we understand the impossible flow of heat
up and out your body, into the world of its own accord
and that’s what we’re here for.
The alloyed metal handle gives out, disallows
changing the degree of the windows’ aperture
compelling an attempt to force the desired state:
if I crack them the cry escapes, if I open them too much
it’s followed by the smell signaling your physic[que] in this space,
if I keep opening them the game reinvents
itself without our notice,
if I close them the light collapses, transforms itself
to fill the darkness
with intermittent patches
of reality made flesh
hanging onto the sheets
just falling apart
at
the
seams.
I don’t have much experience with suture, but I persist regardless
like life resists after each cosmic assault leaves it in ashes, I try
to keep something of ideal distance and delimited atmosphere,
regulate the transference of the empty
and what’s inside.
Alexis López Paleo is a Puerto Rican graduate student at NYU’s Center for Experimental Humanities with a B.B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico. For the five years preceding his M.A. studies he worked as a business consultant, getting to meet all types of interesting people and making many lifelong friends along the way. He hopes to finish his first two collections of poetry in the next year (one in English and one in Spanish).