Poetry |

“Caribbean Nocturne” & “At the Bottom of Tea Cups”

Caribbean Nocturne

 

 

As we pull away from the dock

in San Juan past

 

San Felipe del Morro

the Southern Cross

 

overhead pursues me South

out through the Caribs’s sea.

 

I leave the darkness

go below to a feverish dream

 

drummed into me

by the throb of an engine

 

the ship’s heart, in a night

whose following morning is flying

 

fish swept from the deck

like so many waking dreams.

 

 

 

*     *     *     *    *

 

 

 

At the Bottom of Tea Cups

 

 

I’ve never heard anyone say

referring to a tea drinker

 

that he was in his cups

though it could be said of me

 

that like Samuel Johnson

uncountable is the number

 

of cups of that

golden beverage I daily

 

knock back. Instead I muse

at the end of a long day

 

over the numbers

of fortunes I have failed

 

to see in

the abandoned leaves.

Contributor
Carlos Reyes

Carlos Reyes is the author of 12 volumes of verse, most recently Osage Elegy (Lynx House Press, 2021). His forthcoming collection is Wrestling the Mistral. He has translated poetry collections by Ignacio Ruiz-Pérez, Jorge Carrera Andrade, Edwin Madrid, and Josefina de la Torre, and is the translator and editor of the anthology Poemas de amor y locura (Poems of Love and Madness).

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