'Fears'
Read a selection from Felipe Benitez Reyes' book, Probable Lives, which is now out in paperback. The book revolves around "character-poets" who "read as forgotten or unknown 20th century authors, all 'rediscovered' and compiled by an anthologist who is also the creation of Felipe Benitez Reyes."
To mark National Poetry Month, NPR.org is featuring a series of newly published works selected by the Academy of American Poets. Learn more about this and other titles at the academy's New Spring Books list.
Fears
by Felipe Benitez Reyes
By Gonzalo De Lerma
The sensation of being the only guest
in a grand hotel on the outskirts of the city
-- and hearing the somnambulistic
elevator and a scream --
or being in an empty theater
or in a lonely plaza
of a lonely unknown city
weighed down with suitcases and no money
surrounded by escaped doves
from the studio of the worst taxidermist
that ridiculous melancholy of one who feels ignored
at the parties of younger people
whom he calls late at night
from a bar with the lights already turned off
and talks to himself about the comforts
of being an academic ghost
of an orchestra conductor
I fear, in the end, that I've kissed
The lips of a mistaken goddess
Copyright © 2006 BOA Editions, Ltd. Used by permission of the publisher.
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