Even the dream of power requires skill
conjured blank like beats and breaths, tidal
and leaf fallen. It mustn’t stir the will
but augur dusk in rises and lid the total
real of dream as if the life of life
depended on it. Unchained, the prince
at sudden court unfurled his bleak rife
nature and, waking dungeoned, is convinced
that all fates are rancor’s child, throne
in a pauper’s cup. And so he rises toward justice
at the pinnacle of the unreal, alone
with perfect choices, content with the fullness
the ungripped fog provides to the host blind
stranger, king of self and world and kind.
Ricardo Pau-Llosa’s 8th book of poetry will be released next year by Carnegie Mellon U Press, which published his previous five titles. His poems have appeared in Agni, Ambit, American Poetry Review, Antigonish Review, Arion, Atlanta Review, Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bellevue Literary Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Boston Review, Christianity and Literature, Cimarron Review, Cincinnati Review, Dalhousie Review, december, Ekphrasis, Epoch, The Fiddlehead, Hollins Critic, Hudson Review, Image, Island, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Plume, PN Review, Poetry, Poetry Salzburg Review, Saranac Review, Southern Review, Southwest Review, Stand, 32 Poems, Vallum, Virginia Quarterly Review, Volt, among other literary magazines and numerous anthologies. He is also an art critic and curator.
