3 poems
Enigma [Voice & Echo]
—after John Berryman
There’s a war in this heart. What of the battalion?
Alien.
Such strangeness! How old is this feud?
Is few.
Listen—where does the sound of fury thunder?
Under.
Under where?
The wear.
Cities under civil war become ruinous...
Yes.
And the blistering hell of Earth...
A hearth.
Will shatter the guise of glass armor...
As harmful.
As swords clash and battering rams knock—
*knock knock*
Who dares disturb my speech?
I speak.
So your identity?
Entity.
Please don’t fool around—who are you?
You.
It can’t be. I have died years ago!
And go.
Go where? Where do the dead travel toward—
War.
Then this must mean ghosts leap...
Sleep.
Into a stream...
Dream.
But what if light won’t quake?
Wake.
Bocca Chiusa
—for Gregory Pardlo
Let it hum
the way the lights buzz against
night’s face gazing upon an azure mirror inside
“Interior with Yellow and Blue” by Matisse,
far from elementary—more like tertiary—
where slate grey spills and stains from
emerald lights unto Malbec wood. Let it hum its devotion
to the ineffable by translating the impossible
emotions in vented out of the polynaries
overriding synaptic activity
(Yes—the abundant correlations, the grandeur according to
natural, cosmic, fourth-dimensional feng-shui) until
the tune’s clothes fit. Let it hum forever
like internal monologues running on sentences,
sans the syntactics or semantics or sermons served
hot on Sundays with a bowl of frozen custard to cool down after
blowing off steam. Let it hum let it hum let it hum
something so addicting, a magic eraser couldn’t
even mark it away from memory
(the taste, the forbidden fruit, the phallic fallacy)
failing the rest of humanity, and drum-roll please:
let it hum and sit with the unredeemed
echoes passed. Let it hum something new,
revealing the smile’s hidden track once we think
the vinyl record hisses into oblivion.
Longing & Regret on an Invisible Cartesian Grid
Please designate your coordinates:
STAY
COME BACK
AWAY
Rex Ybañez, or The Literary Alchemist, is a Filipino American freelance copywriter and editor from the Midwest. A former Pushcart Prize nominee and 2020 Moon City Press Poetry Award finalist, he has judged and worked as a master of ceremonies for regional Poetry Outloud competitions in Southwest Missouri. He previously hosted literary events locally at book stores, lounges, and bars before the COVID-19 pandemic. His work is published in Half Mystic, Noctua Review, Prism Review, Doubly Mad, HVTN, Peculiar Mormyrid, DANSE MACABRE, and others. He helped establish the Artist Empowerment Collective, an NPO that aims to amplify artists of color through cultural healing, community engagement, and education in Springfield, Missouri. He lives with his girlfriend Sariah.