TE22 Potpourri

Ángelo Néstore

Impure Acts

Pelicans Die of Hunger from Blindness To the fisherwoman, Muriel

coming to sotto voce conclusions, staring with a certain unease at the misshapen dryness of my sterile mouth.

Pelicans die of hunger from blindness. They plunge their beaks into the water at such speeds to feed their chicks that their eyes become damaged until they wind up blind and die.

In a supermarket, a woman pushes her shopping cart with difficulty,

stops before the fish counter, adjusts her progressive lenses.

I sense her yearning for life when she tells the fishmonger half a kilo of sea bass for the girls and I see in her the speed of a bird that spreads its wings, plummets (its eyes bleeding) and tucks away in her bag a sea bass. A pelican with progressive lenses, a woman with a fish between her teeth— they’re all the mothers I’m not and who watch me, 208

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