Encountering Poetry / March 2012 (Issue 16)


Sonia Wants to Rent an Apartment

by José Manuel Sevilla

Nobody prays in this building
but we all live full of grace.
Come in and sit down, in an evening like this
I took a cigarette from Maria’s lips.

Forgive that there is always bad weather in this window
and forgive this clock stopped at 8.15 Hiroshima time.

Forgive our thoughts
like bed sheets where a body fought the fever.

Forgive that we look like being better
when we are really just older.

Forgive that in a world like this
we became parents
and forgive if after the car bomb
I buy you a drink.

Now come with me to my old school,
I will lead you to a class without the cross that I took away,
in an evening like this
I wrote a phrase on the blackboard
that nobody erased because the soldiers arrived.
 
 
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