Dedications – Omar Zefier

June 10, 2026

‘Antipoetry’

            para Nicanor Parra
 

This time around, I follow in your footsteps,

this time around, I’m the blunt edge

of a murder weapon,

and with a bloody mouth it is then proclaimed:

it’s better not to barricade meaning

with a metaphor,

and thus address a thought directly as its superior,

for it comes from you, and you alone,

or perhaps it’s an impression made

by your environment,

or the fingers of God, their trace,

which mold the creases on the brain

from then until retirement,

but Nicanor, I just don’t know,

though I still say the pretense is deafening:

one’s sincere, and by the germ of their brevity,

their experience is recalled as analogy:

no, it happened exactly the way I said it did—

yes, I’ve yet to come close to what an anti-poem is

in my poem denouncing poetry, whose conventions

are exalted like evidence of a living spirit;

unable to not write a poem, I need to wring

the magic from my bones—

one day, Nicanor, as I approach your grave,

I will beg you to loan me yours

 
‘The Breeze’

            for Marcel Proust

 

It was the breeze which carried scents

attached to the past like invisible remora,

from childlike omnipotence

yet to take its toll,

for one was possessed by the specter

of potential (another fatal placebo),

but now, they’re but ashen leaves

turned about, smokey-side up,

and I know, there’s nothing to retrieve,

I know, I’m busy swallowing the bees

whilst entertaining thoughts about honey,

as I’ll reflect on now

with the same face I’d gazed

with on then

set to miss what I’ve got now

when present within the present—

I’ve got some thinking to do,

as all my reflections, musings

on fluid time,

feature odd light mangled

by refraction,

a consequence of constantly

turning back,

which is nothing in contrast

to what happened to Lot’s wife