Alfonso D'Aquino - a book of shifting subjectivity and liquid perspective, of surrealist tradition and Butoh-like gestures. The speaker morphs into what he observes; speech comes alive while a plant becomes speech

Alfonso D'Aquino, fungus skull eye wing: Selected Poems of Alfonso D'Aquino, Trans. by Forrest Gander, Copper Canyon Press 2013.

"Alfonso D'Aquino was raised by his grandmother in an old house attached to a colonial convent in Coyoacán, Mexico. He never met his parents. Books were his best friends from an early age. Often solitary, he spent many afternoons at a small aquarium in the nearby town of San Ángel, fascinated then as now by the non-human."—Forrest Gander, from the introduction

fungus skull eye wing is a book of shifting subjectivity and liquid perspective, of surrealist tradition and Butoh-like gestures. The text flirts with the margins of the "rational," perception, and the subjective mind. The speaker morphs into what he observes; speech comes alive while a plant becomes speech. Impeccably translated from Spanish by award-winning poet Forrest Gander in a bilingual edition.

From "Its Verb's Forked Tongue":

Its verb's forked tongueTransforms transnominatestranslucent linethe viper the verbtranslades its shadowTattoo freakfrom rows of spotsa star transudesa language of scales .

Poems from this book have appeared in the following excellent literary journals:Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art
Connotation Press: An Online Artifact
Interim
LiteralS/N New World Poetics

Vertical Fish / graffiti

traced with a finger on the salty surface of a wall
with a bladder of dry blood it floats in rock its skeleton outside it
fish fish hook round hole
its feather-duster mouth stitched with blue wires
through skin water sucks in through skin water is expelled
lidless nameless fossil adrift hot and ocher
x-ray of the fish at its peak its radiant spume
mineralized when caves were still filled with tranquil water
phosphorescing into the foggy stone
thorn hidden in the corners of laughter
a dense green mist in each pocket of flesh or primal water
forms a nest of saliva on the facing wall
lytic fish hatchetfish awl fish fish knifing through water
volcanic glass fish in the dawn of animality
dark magnetism in the cranial hollow extinct fish before language
cerulean naked fixed spherical spindle-shaped cylindrical red
discerning stormwater from wastewater
dorsal fins atrophied in the genetic play of crossbreeding fish
column and hole
indistinguishable from crowded zeros to the left of black sea urchins
it hears through the plaster to the interior wall
between stones chock-full with painted animals that nothing illuminates
the fish emerging from the fish when its skeleton isn’t any longer a cage
golden saliva and fugitive music
unable to sense the putrefaction of new tail-stems on the ground
hanging fish
unimaginably distorted returned to the bitter water under the tongue
the salt-tortured liquid in abysses that illumine
fish fish hook round hole
the moon’s thorn piercing its throat
its internal skeleton dissolving in the quicksilver of a mirror
a green sun phosphorescing under black water
fossa of the thirsting fish imagined by another fish in its desert
rows of iridescent thorns below the stars
below the mud of time fish eating fish the surest verity
violet scales throughout all the earth’s layers
red salt lustrous on the broken glass scales
the female whose caudal fin stiffens as she spawns the first egg
fingernail fish the skylight opened
through skin water sucks in through skin water expelled
scream of a fish drooling mortified in its leafy bed
in silence it sings in silence like a bouquet of salt in the mind

* * *

Frond

It’s formless the leaf in the middle of the leaves Leaves aren’t the alder but the air in its sleeve And trees drink each other in from one of them a singular leaf Gesticulation of the frond disclosing another flower And each moves into the other like a sky between two leaves Wild invisible branch twisting into one form If one leaf and another leaf always are the same leaf

From within the leaves I see one brushing another that keeps it company All the tree a leaf that holds all the alder and more leaves… And a frond emerges tangled in the branches among the leaves From within its patterns I see in the shadowed bower the other flower… And the phylum transfloresces invisibly woven and opening out… The stalk and the corolla spirals darkening and digging in… From the unseen branch to the shade of this leaf falling broken…

translated by Forrest Gander
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Alfonso D'Aquino is an editor, poetry instructor, snake handler, and author of six books. He was born in Mexico City in 1959 and currently lives in Cuernavaca, Mexico. His poetry is included in the landmark anthology Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry.