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To the Memory of Frederico Garcia Lorca
Sal Buttaci
I tuck your poems under my pillow
the gasping ones you wrote with blood
the August night they led you away
and shot you dead in the dark courtyard
I tuck your last poems there
safe beneath my sleeping head
and wonder if in dreams
you might recite the words to me
I tuck them hidden far from those
who still try to mute your poet’s voice
as if your words were sharp enough
to slice deep into evil hearts
I tuck the magic of your cadences
feel their rhythms dance against me
feed the open mouth of hopelessness
make all that is sad happy again
I tuck the poems your Spanish tongue
will never speak again, poems the wicked
crushed beneath their heels the night
truth died in a salvo of exploding fire
Sal Buttaci, who lives with
his wife Sharon in Princeton,
WV, is the author of two flash
books, Flashing My Shorts
and200 Shorts.
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