Lorca Pretending to be Dead

(After Dalí’s photo of Lorca playing dead)

closed eyelids,
curtains hiding stage prop soul.

mouth curved like infant belly
filled with milk
sleeping in growth.

tongue held like an Astra pistol
in the hands of a starving child.

ears the sound holes of flamenco acoustics,
filled with soil by revolting farmers
of insalubrious notes.

The confidence of warm lunar
Almeria desert in the eyebrows.
What invading army would cross
a desert of moon?

Destiny of raw olives never picked in fingers
pressed against earth to hear the
pulse of buried Roman ruins.

The sea well-hidden on his cheeks,
but the pain of salt is felt on dry-land cuts.

Awake, the invaders are here.

Chris Pellizzari is a poet living in Illinois.