Lorca’s lips
Clumsy, coarse of feature, it is said.
One leg shorter than the other.
Liar, about works he intended to compose,
which he said were almost finished.
Which he hadn’t even begun (like me,
spiller of seed, waster of his little time).
In mirrored cafes and at piano keyboards
gossiper, debater, uncombed, untied.
Carnal clown, answering the door in underpants,
Luis Cernuda naked on the daybed, explaining
“We were doing tumbling exercises.”
Mooch, living pampered off Papa,
until in ’31 he put on his blue overalls,
making from nothing a theater of the people,
sensuous, narrative, a school for
weeping and laughing,
like passing a consecrated host
from one mouth to another and another forever.
Weeper, who, told he’d be shot that day,
asked the guard “Will I be…