nicolás mansito |
|
| |
|
Nicolás Mansito III works across multiple genres – essay, poetry, short-fiction, creative nonfiction, interview, and translation – and between two languages, English and Spanish. His work has appeared in places such as Jacket, Nebula, Rio Grande Review, 21 Stars Review, Words Without Borders, Rhino, Sojourn, Babel Fruit, The Arabesques Review, MiPOesias, and Center. |
|
| |
|
|
|
~After the film, Up and Down (2006)
Kung Pao the horse salami Polka while grilled bats bubbly the Colonel’s Bangkok batter. Mid-Eastern border patrol custom Czechs the oil-slick lizard and wheel-chair Momma hawking pawn shop babies – cleft-lip carnival gopher checkered soup – ugly eater infertile criminal record – a fan because there’s no God. Smug granola the dog gypsy Classics professor. Heart-attack-tumor surf-shop Einstein... watch out for the ‘roos and Arab luggage thieves. Flannel embrace the welcome home Vietnam discount. Jack the Rip-Off taxi cab confession. Spanish-tile fly-fishing sauerkraut sit-ups Muslim diet Sunday chestnut bloom. Omembe Lenin lonesome phoenix Civics learned. Translation crunch! Peggy Sue – pretty, pretty, pretty pickled herring. The cobbler’s kids barefoot Duke Kahanamoku. A small donation of sleeping pills marry the mistress wife-front. Senile whim the substantial beer habit – Mmm! Port wine! Let me piss lacrimal to hate the husband father-love. Got Pampers?! Sparta Praha! Mastiff National Anthem Fútbol Fín. Cheers! The ambling skeleton dreams red-handed getaway. Chinese dive the black-belt jungle. Welcome home, Martin...nothing like your face door-jammed. Paraplegic hot chocolate. So goes the Ferris wheel James Brown Voodoo.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
Devastate the word pocket cilia
To Sarasota third world tattletale.
Harikari braille contradicts the sphere
Of Spanish echo tantrum podia.
Perchance myopia applied neuron
Catches necrophilia ampersand.
Diacritic wasteland leggy mountain
Barbells mother thyroid wooly hand-out.
Ricochet kraut tree lawsuit Hellenic;
Smallpox helper execute Czech spider.
Gladiator wire culvert slip-dive;
Kettle slap-stick un cosmic Ophelia. |
|
| |
|
The Butcher of Monte Celín |
|
~ After Wallace Stevens
Call the bent-backed butleress,
The butcher with buttressed calves,
And bid her bring another succulent kneecap nugget.
Let Napoleon salute his fat-necked father’s ashes,
Let concupiscence spurt from his blue bovine’s teat,
And bring him the peptic rush of cannibalized progeny.
Let be be the finale of acid reflux green.
The only butcher is the butleress of Monte Celín.
Take from betwixt and between the tangled trees,
An idea of esophageal disorder, that chronic
Constipation he withstands wishing it would run.
Let him marinate the tender of his loins,
And if the butcher’s cut is gristly, it comes
To show how edged she is, and mean.
Let the ingested buttocks bulbs free.
The only butcher is the butleress of Monte Celín. |
|
| |
|
|
|
It’s no surprise to me that socks, because of their nomadic nature, constantly get lost in the universe of our drying machines.
Many underestimate the power the universe in our drying machines has over the explorative instincts of our socks.
Like a Siren, this universe calls to them, and they in turn can only follow – acquiescing to a force within them they do not understand, nor care to.
Through a dark tunnel they travel zombie-like. Some, assuming that they are dying, imagine a light at the end of this tunnel, while others, those who have spoken to the ghosts of their ancestors, know there is no saving, spiritual light – only a lava lamp at the end of a starless universe speckled with the lint of those whose structures could not withstand the ardors of the journey.
It is not a death, merely a crossing, a passing if you will onto the dance floor cut into this universe where socks of every shape, color, and size waltz the afterlife. |
|
|
|
| |
|
|