Abel Folgar


ABEL FOLGAR was born in Caracas, Venezuela and currently resides in South Florida.




PERSISTENCE OF VISION

Caracas flashes in the window’s frame.
I’m pretty sure Plácido’s driving this
yellow bucket too close to the precipice

that flanks all dreams and every mountain
road surrounding the valley – the sea
of red tile blurred into a pulsating

organism – its movements broken by
the seashell sound of the subconscious,
the occasional tree branch flicking the

rearview, and a growing huddle in the back
seat. One of the older kids holds
a cow’s eye in a wrinkled bundle of

aluminum foil. Nobody wants to touch
and Plácido knows something’s up
cause he keeps looking in his visor-mirror,

the bus jerking slightly with his visual shifts.
Absent are the oohs and ahhs of tittie pics
or the cigarette smoke we were too dumb

to believe we could actually hide;
he doesn’t know much, but he knows
that silent kids probably mean trouble.




ISAAC’S TERRITORY

Some might say you haven’t lived till
you see an anhinga dry its wings in the sun.
They might even say you’re too dumb
to step right on a mangrove’s root,
you watch too much TV, smoke too much hash,
dress sloppy, and eat unpronounceable foods.
But tonight – tonight after you wash up
and get something hot in your stomach,
you’re gonna call that Chilean girl
because no matter what they say,
you want to take her out to the Everglades
and go on a canoe ride.
You want to get close enough to her neck
to taste the petals of her father’s floral shop.
And you’ll hold that soft hand,
giving gentle squeezes with the sway of the craft.
Even if you miss the bird and manage
to twist your ankle, dipping your ass in brackish
muck, you’re gonna get in that neck,
and inhale every last bit of pollen;
no matter what your romantic detractors say,
you’re going to teach them a few things.


LIGHTLY LACQUERED WOOD

 
This one’s not a dark dream – it’s hazy and I’m inside the Camoruca harp shop,
following sounds.
I mean, it’s dark inside the old concrete building, moist too: I can feel it in my
lungs now that I quit smoking
and there’s a radio in here somewhere, a crackled, omni-directional cacophony
comes through in spats;
they blame the weather – these indigenous luthiers – they say it hasn’t rained
this hard in the llanos since Florentino

beat the Devil in a duel and that was a long, long time ago. They’re all old, all
three of them,
old enough to begin recollections slowly, closing their eyes, how their fathers
taught them
the catgut stretch, the gentle, even hand that sands the cedar and pine... The
one closest to the door
tells me there are thirty-two strings of varying widths and that the best players,
the ones who pluck as if graced by God,

can’t read music. I’m looking in a box of tuning pins and pulley wheels when it
begins to fade,
and I know he’s real happy with what he told me – real orgullo artesanal and the
fading
gets stronger... but for this part, the part where the harp is completed, he
doesn’t have to tell me a thing:
I help him stand it up, an enormous, bottom heavy pie wedge; the string mast
rising out like a sundial.

When I’m gone, vapor-broken in their charged atmosphere, they’ll apply a thin
lacquer over the wood,
just enough for shine, but so thin those pores will breathe pure tonal excellence.
When it dries I’m fully awake.
Awake in Miami, light rain outside, little pools forming in the mulch – summer,
finally.
It hadn’t rained here in a while either; not since the Devil demanded a rematch,
and that wasn’t so long ago.



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