Benjamín Galván Gómez – R Picazo

July 19, 2021

there’s a cenzontle hanging
from a branch,
staring at you
as if youre going to kill it

it speaks when it flies to you,
when it slips between your lips,
tucks under your teeth
Dives somewhere down
your throat,
pecking at your liver

kidney in a
mouth hidden
under a scalp under the
pelvic bone where the skulls
of the other birds are hiding shivering

Cenzontles on a branch With flesh in their mouths

it makes its way to
your stomach now,
burrowing its beak somewhere into the meat
youre going to go missing
padding these feet against the rocks

it stares at the others
hanging
from branches its saying youre
disappearing into the seas of an empty ranch

toa river’s shore,
to a man holding himself
In fingers somewhere
to heads on the ground on sticks on tapping hands in chests
composed of slices of feathers, held together by strings of branches of strings of clots
mutilated cenzontles decomposing in your brain

the bird pokes
its head out of you
there is nothing outside of you

wet chirping underneath a house somewhere
cenzontles hanging