by José Luis Álvarez Escontrela

for the longings of misled temper
endure for ages under this granular sky
melting in a dense grit of black flowers;

I shout for those who walk at night
in a sombre gaze by the water flowing
with ponds of motor oil by the gutter,

my face melts in the glass
close to you, the walker
of the treeless nights,

how come you came all the way
to this street and didn’t find love?
how come you can still walk?

after the weight of the rain, you can?
I have surrendered, my bones sipped the water
and are denser and thick,

is there meat in yours? how come?
I forgot mine in the past,
but you are still there, walking

and not caring
about the fears of the one who sees you,
there, walking alone in the dark

like me, like the ones
who used to walk the nights with you
and live under the umbrella of sadness,

behind the tin of the walls
and the grit smoke of timber,
we walk with you, I’m certain

and ablaze with the passion of your patience,
the one we lost with our faces
under the rains that endured.

José Luis Álvarez Escontrela was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1995. He holds a BA in Literature by the Central University of Venezuela, and a minor degree in Creative Writing from the Metropolitan University and ICREA. He was part of the anthology Poets Night I (Diversidad Literaria Press, Buenos Aires, 2015). His poems have appeared in Juste Milieu (June 2019), Rigorous (July 2019), and MásPoesía (June 2019). One of his poems will be published in Inkwell (April 2020) as the winner of the National Literature Day poem. He has published non-fiction articles for Problemon.