Two Poems by Roberto Picador

by Roberto Picador

When We Danced in Mexico City

since she was lonely and begging on a corner

I comforted her with spare change and a deep kiss

that tasted like a heavy pistol in my mouth

the distinctive metal distracted by a moan

and her slow hand reached under my belt, fingers tugged

on the zipper to demonstrate an illusion like a ghost wilting

souls contained in eternity passed us on the sidewalk

she drooled on my neck and laughed like a lunatic on the verge of violence

Passing On the Disease

working on a rusty freighter with madmen, ex-convicts, a defrocked priest

we pulled into a port in the Azores and once finished unloading

found the closet bar and drank like the wind would forget the ideals we

clutched onto, baked into our generational flesh since birth.

brief women left their nail streaks in my skin which barely healed before pulling back

into my driveway

my wife at that time noticed a difference, especially when we fucked, grimacing

since the clap was on a full painful display

with a yellowed drip and the corrosive scent of death