Daniel Coudriet
The End of the Party
The baby is not a microphone.
You are the shielding I place around myself.
There are violins. There are violins.
This is the same keyboard.
The way fireworks are within fingertips
I would be a mountain.
I would be cocaine & the quarterback.
I’ll be late but I’ll be ready to sing.
It is a funeral. No need to thank me.
Post solar
I am alcohol.
I am a mosaicked market
& the cold star smoldering
the sun on our tablecloth
in La Barceloneta.
I am a nerve net
of creatures scurrying
the alleys that grow inside
of me. Even here the sea.
Everything you love
mashed into a paste
& coating the inside
of these boquerones fritos.
The sun on skin is a tongue.
The sun is a tongue.
Even now you can feel it.
We are the water
they dream of draining
from their cities.
The same. Again.
Daniel Coudriet lives with his wife and son in Richmond, Virginia, and in Carcarañá, Argentina. He is the author of Say Sand (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010) and a chapbook, Parade (Blue Hour Press, 2012), which can be read here. His poems and translations have made recent appearances in Colorado Review, Conjunctions Online, Green Mountains Review, jubilat, Oversound, Prelude, Transom, and elsewhere.