Unknown Distances, inkjet print on canvas, 2012, iliana emilia garcia
“UNKNOWN DISTANCES”
by Francisco Aragon
Not
this deserted stretch of beach this
morning fog…
And that slick border of sand
would make a slapping sound
were I to run
barefoot
along the very edge
(the foam
on my left
receding)
as I did after school those years
four of them,
striding to the Cliff House
and back: practice.
Not
this shoreline—a kind of liquid lace
gathering at the corners
of your mouth
that Sunday you ran with me:
the starter’s pistol, mile 1,
mile 5,
veering
off at mile 10…
—The San Francisco
Marathon I finished
at fifteen. Not
this ocean’s palette—muted, barely
green: a fringe of froth
along the top dissolving
into sky, half this canvas
white
—a kind of absence.
But rather:
this human invention
—two of them—
of weathered
wood, tightly woven
for sitting.
And if you were seated on the right, in the distance
and I in the one
on the left
in the foreground,
we’d
be facing each other
We might even
speak
Photo by Mike Cook
In 1998, after a ten-year residence in Spain, Francisco Aragón began a period of activity that included his own literary output, editing, translating, and curating. In 2003 he joined the Institute for Latino Studies (ILS) at the University of Notre Dame, where he founded Letras Latinas, the ILS’ literary initiative. In 2010, he was awarded the Outstanding Latino/a Cultural Arts, Literary Arts and Publications Award by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, and in 2015 a VIDO Award by VIDA, Women in the Literary Arts. A CantoMundo Fellow and member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop, Aragón is the author of Puerta del Sol (2005) and Glow of Our Sweat (2010) as well as editor of The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (2007), these latter two winners of International Latino Book Awards. He teaches a course on Latino/a poetry at Notre Dame in the fall and directs Letras Latinas in Washington DC in the spring and summer. For more: franciscoaragon.net . "Unknown Distances" first appeared in Nepantla and was written as part of PINTURA:PALABRA, a project in ekphrasis.