Poem of the Week by Peter Ramos in The Buffalo News.
Forgetting Mary, the blue delphiniums
and statues with painted flesh
I whispered to black screen, beyond which the black cloth
in shadows murmured all right,
and is that all and did I forget
the prayer? All those wooden decades
I fingered, thinking what else
did I forget, forget to tell black screen:
bodies in Spring, twitching volts, what I held
in my heart or hand? Blackest screen
funereal and stern
into whose shadow my light
quivering just gathering itself
popped and fizzled. Did I remember
to choke down the black screen
or, kneeling, forget myself?
* * *
Sangre de santos, del Padre,
Hijo, Espíritu Santo. Metallic taste
in my mouth for years – father-blood
of the cup, the cross, the busted lip,
of all my raw-knuckled progenitors.
PETER RAMOS will be joined by musicians David Wasik and Joe Rozler as he reads from his latest collection of poems “Television Snow” (Back Pages Books) from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, 1300 Elmwood Ave. He is an associate professor of English at SUNY Buffalo State.