DEAR COMMISSAR

Dear Commissar
my poetry sings
of politician baboons puffing winds of vendetta,
splashes of sweet-flowing buttock
valleys of pay-less city laborers, rough crackling red
clay of sanctions smashing poverty 
corrupted face of my village, presidential t-shirt
tearing across bellies of street hustlers,
mute bitter laughter of political forests after the fall 
of lemon trees.

Dear Commissar
my poetry is the foot
signatures of struggling mothers and green horns
bewitched by one-party state cocaine,
new slogan hustlers boozing promises
after the herbal tea of ‘change!’ rhetoric;
street nostrils drip stink and garbage
tears chiseling the rocky breasts
of mothers who lose wombs
in the charcoal of voter recount. 

Dear Commissar
my poetry dances
to peasant drums moving to
the new gimmick unknowingly,
politician jugglers eating voter
drumsticks after another ballot loot.

Artwork by Quim Paredes