REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS [12.915]

Reginald Dwayne Betts

Reginald Dwayne Betts es un poeta americano, memorialista, y maestro. 

Obra:

"A Conversation" , Beltway Poetry Quarterly , Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2006

"let me tell you bout the night i died"; "Misunderstood"; "Soldier's Song" , The Drunken Boat , Cave Canem Issue 2008 Vol.8 Issues III-IV, Reginald Dwayne Betts

Shahid Reads His Own Palm . Alice James Books. 2010. ISBN 978-1-882295-81-4 .

Near burn and burden: a collection of poems . Warren Wilson College. 2010.

A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison . Penguin. 2010. ISBN 978-1-58333-396-9 .

Algunas veces eso es todo

¿Tiempo?, y qué más mueve a un hombre a esculpir con el cepillo

de dientes dentro de la lengua de dios? Llámalo una oferta:

vulgarismo para tender, una mínima obligación que dejas

años se hincharon en treinta segundos

esto tomó al asesino, y las razones son indignas una vez que

puños de camisa cierran las muñecas, después viene la porquería de la noche

agotó la historia de guerra para desechar su propio cuerpo por

la línea directa de una celda y el ángulo recto, y no uno

tener cuidado para nada, no sobre una oportunidad de promesa

envuelta en el cinturón de castidad del tiempo, o secretos

amartillar el ojo dice el jabón cuando ellos se detiene de forma correcta

víboras, o por qué el ladrillo está siempre callado,

un cofre de ásperos ecos porque el hombre piensa

que el tiempo podría salvarlos, sin complicidad

la prisión saca los pasos incluidos en el ritmo del tiempo

o cómo este momento podría refractarse, reflejar sangre

-retirar la charla, cualquiera, el tiempo podría fondear con melodías y dentro

segundos, comas, puños o nada y cantos.

(Traducción Federico Vite)

“For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers”

For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers,

green roses, chrysanthemums, lilies: retrophilia,

philocaly, philomath, sarcophilous—all this love,

of the past, of beauty, of knowledge, of flesh; this is

catalogue & counter: philalethist, negrophile, neophile.

A negro man walks down the street, taps Newport

out against a brick wall & stares at you. Love

that: lygophilia, lithophilous. Be amongst stones,

amongst darkness. We are glass house. Philopornist,

philotechnical. Why not worship the demimonde?

Love that—a corner room, whatever is not there,

all the clutter you keep secret. Palaeophile,

ornithophilous: you, antiquarian, pollinated by birds.

All this a way to dream green rose petals on the bed you love;

petrophilous, stigmatophilia: live near rocks, tattoo hurt;

for you topophilia: what place do you love? All these words

for love (for you), all these ways to say believe

in symphily, to say let us live near each other.

Source: Poetry (September 2011).

A Postmodern Two-Step

Some people say prison is the country

where life is cheaper than anywhere else;

you wouldn’t think that watching us take leave,

our caravan three deep and black against

the wine-dark asphalt, and two of three

are nothing but escorts: four uniformed

shotguns (off safety) leading and flanking

our coffle, all intent to keep us here,

and not wherever shackles and cuffs run

in this dead of morning, less than fifty miles

from where Nat Turner dug a hole and lay

for weeks. Virginia, something noose-like then

and some say still, except for all the shit

we did to land in this here hull and cul-

de-sac. The guard, he say “die, but don’t run”

when one of us begin to cough his lung

up in sleep. And this is ruin. Damn these chains,

this awkward dance I do with this van. Two-step,

my body swaying back and forth, my head

a pendulum that’s rocked by the wild riffs

of the dudes I’m riding with: them white folks know

you ain’t god body, what you commune wine

and bread? Where you from son? Red lines?

To what Onion? My eyes two caskets though,

so the voices are sheets of sound. Our van as dark

inside as out, and all the bodies black

and voices black too and I tell my god

if you have ears for this one, know I want

no part of it, no Onions and no tears.

I tell no one, and cry my dirge.

                                                        This place,

the cracked and scratching vinyl seats, the loud

loud talk of murder this and blanket fear

around the rest, is where I’m most at home,

but it’s beyond where prayers reach, a point

something like purgatory. I lean back

and drift in sleep as someone says, his voice

all hoarse and jacked, all broken songbird-like

all revolutions end with a L-note.

Source: Poetry (November 2012).

At the End of Life, a Secret

Everything measured. A man twists

a tuft of your hair out for no reason

other than you are naked before him

and he is bored with nakedness. Moments

before he was weighing your gallbladder,

and then he was staring at the empty space

where your lungs were. Even dead, we still

say you are an organ donor, as if something

other than taxes outlasts death. Your feet

are regular feet. Two of them, and there is no

mark to suggest you were an expert mathematician,

nothing that suggests that a woman loved

you until you died. From the time your body

was carted before him to the time your

dead body is being sent to the coffin,

every pound is accounted for, except 21 grams.

The man is a praying man and has figured

what it means. He says this is the soul, finally,

after the breath has gone. The soul: less than

$4,000 worth of crack—21 grams—

all that moves you through this world.

This poem first appeared in New England Review.

Source: Poetry (November 2012).