Page 52 - Litteratteur Redefining World December issue

Litterateur redefining world December 2020

THE DAY MAX WENT TO THE HOSPITAL

Ivan Arguelles

Iván Argüelles is an innovative Mexican-American poet whose many publications span the
decades since 1970. He was raised in Mexico DF, Los Angeles, and Rochester MN.
Educated at the University of Chicago with a degree in Classics, he also received a masters
degree in Library Science from Vanderbilt. His many books of poetry include: “That”
Goddess; Madonna Septet; Comedy , Divine , The; FIAT LUX; Orphic Cantos; Fragments
from a Gone World; and, Twilight Cantos … He received the 1989 William Carlos Williams
Award for Looking for Mary Lou; in 2010 an award from the Before Columbus Foundation
for The Death of Stalin; he also received a lifetime achievement award from that Foundation
in 2013. A retired librarian he has resided in Berkeley CA since 1978. He is the identical twin
of New Age Prophet José Argüelles (d. 2011

ignorant of voice the heavens of number and sound
redound in the finite zero of memory echoes of shoulder
burdened with death and shape and tone of thumb
the resistant valley of yesterday’s umbrage toiling
with woods come rushing to water’s edge
surface where Narcissus and Lazarus return their
infinitesimal cries for salvation and do leaves changing hue

and stemming from a violent origin ever reside ?
autumnal resin and puerperal fever of metal
reflecting the absences of children the dread lock
of hair shorn at the wrong time the razor blade
in its plastic oblivion and the photo machine
gyrating in the dark sheathes of pre-dawn New York

52