YOUSSEF ALAOUI-FDILI

For Real This Time


Earth. We are no one.

Early life Visions of stale cola

in your narrow hand

 
A somber room with curling

posters. That jacket makes

your legs look skinny.

Been running all night

Can't stop puking



Satan is just the possibility

Of a baby inside me

I remember the time

We spent sowing onions

Under cemetery trees,

Buried a pocket knife

One for you, one for me

Set fire to the dog



Arching our backs in your closet

Full ashtrays and bumblebees

A crocheted shawl we found

Hidden in an alley

It belonged to a victim

We decided. A murder.

A Kidnapping, a beating.

It didn't matter. Now it's ours.

Smell here. Can you tell?



The last slide show

your uncle ever showed us

Before he went to the hospital

Was about Israel

Pictures of the desert



When could we get some of that

Chocolate

Is real Israel? We would laugh

Now they're all dead



Not so funny

But the slide show was

Painfully boring.

These kids who beg for death

Jump on concrete



Here or there

I wish you would

Pack me up in your car and take me

Like we did

The other day

Only

For real this time.



Colombia


If only my five fingers were dynamite

for as I touched you I discovered

your heart is a dark and gorgeous mountain.

If only the jungles hadn’t overwhelmed us

I might have dug us a cave

to hide our lying bodies.


If only we had hidden the fruit we found.

I would have brought you a blanket

for the earth above us is so cold.


If we meet again

and if I should hold you

this mountain will shudder and crumble.


                              ---Youssef Alaoui-Fdili

Youssef Alaoui-Fdili is a Moroccan-Latino, born in California. His family and heritage are an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings.