» Poetry

Two Poems from “open pit”

These poems are from Villarán’s forthcoming collection open pit.

he likes to stare at walls

you were born in davis

in a small inflatable pool

in april

during those first weeks, you would often wake up crying

in the middle of the night. without really knowing how

i would pick you up from the crib and hold you tight against

my chest, until you calmed down, and fell asleep again

i liked staying like this for a while

staring at the darkness

that would become the wall

the world is waiting in line / at target

imagine us in the car a sunny day the windows down

driving to the beach 88.3 driving and all those cars next to us driving

always in movement the highway is always full because the more

lanes we build the more cars are attracted to the smell of concrete

and white arrows painted over seemingly endless black surfaces:

the original infrastructure of future battlefields

imagine thousands of small highways running inside of you

all those cars driving somewhere taking something someone like us

perhaps to the beach with your mother so we would have the cooler

and the tent the umbrellas and the surfboards imagine all those cars

going somewhere taking something driving someone imagine all that

movement all that continuous movement the displacement dislocation

bodies inside metal vehicles on black surfaces running

imagine thousands of small really really small

a huge conveyor belt a network of swollen arteries imagine an open pit

an open wound the skin rupturing imagine your leg imagine your arm

imagine my leg imagine my arm

a big bag of tendons and ligaments necrotic tissue a bundle of nerve

tissue imagine bags of plastic inside your stomach lining your

intestines and climbing up your esophagus through the larynx

the lack of oxygen

imagine these huge pond type structures with plastic geothermal

liners stretching across the mountains dissecting the mountains

becoming the new mountain the only landscape leaching ponds laid

out in endless geometrical patterns

imagine every single muscle every fiber every synapse every neuron

needed for you to type with your right index finger:

n. n. n.
the letter n

imagine thousands of small highways pulsating inside of you

imagine it never stopping

thousands of small highways and the cars and the people and the things

and the places they want to take those things to because that’s what we

do we go places with things and we use metal vehicles that travel on

seemingly endless black surfaces just imagine all of this happening all

the time all the time happening all the time always

this highway

 there’s no outside

this open pit

this wound this rupture this crevice inside body this highway all the time

always

what i’m trying to say miqel is:

just imagine thousands of small highways always running inside of you

imagine everything that’s needed for this to happen

all the time

always

now imagine an open pit a large open pit in the middle of a valley

surrounded by fractured mountains

i think that’s how it works

we have that pit

we keep running: faster faster faster

birds die and their stomachs are filled with plastic

whales die and their stomachs are filled with plastic

the united states economy gets a billion-dollar daily shot in its arm

imagine your arm

i’m thinking of mine

we have that pit

and we fill it with these things

we keep running faster always faster

now imagine us at the beach, imagine it being sunny again but not

too hot, imagine the sky punctuated by a few curious clouds, your

mother would be smiling, she’s beautiful when she smiles

it’s still happening

i don’t know what it is

i’m not sure what to do about it either

but i know it’s happening, all the time, always, relentless

we have that pit, it’s open, really open

and things are exploding and people are breaking and burning and dying

and we’re distracted

because we love the sand

the salt in the water

the cool air