Cover art: House of the Devil, painting by Ron Laboray.
You take me by the broken hand
The hand is feeble
it has limits
when the nail
cuts through the flesh
nothing can undo it
the piece of fallen skin
the knife
the clockwork of meat
with how much sorrow
did Christ stare
at his maimed body
with how much woe
his hands and feet
they look like dead little rabbits
he said
my most beautiful babies
they look like sad children
who have lost their mother
in the strained
tendon
blue and broken
blood pours coagulates
like the wound
in the neck
of the yakuza
the tendon the wrecked back
the twist of the muscles
of the thumb
trying to grab the iron handle
trying to hold the iron
handle
to calculate the necessary angle of the cut
neck artery carpal tunnel
the same crucifixion
rabbit heads that decorate
the entrance of a house
Christ weeps for his hands and feet
the hand
of the cripple
is a flock
of small birds
the hand of the leper
little children
looking for their mother
the hand that received the money
rabbits that come to a halt
so they can smell death
the tendons will become hell
they will never tighten around a neck again
the hand that will not be able to write
to claim
its blood
look at me it says
look at me nailed
to the wood
like a sad whore
in a street corner.
The exposed bone
warm raw
the sun’s never been
this white
the metal’s never —
the bone is the iron
of the weak
the bone the hidden horror
of the threatened
white
red with rage
the sun behind the dust
of the fog
you cannot lie
when the uniform
is this cold
when water is wasted
on entire rivers
when the soil is a single
aluminum thorn
the exposed bone
like a girl’s
virginity
there will never be any poetry
in this death
the white bone
is the air
split in two
by the earthquake
the voice of God
that killed the prophet.
Juan Daniel Neira Basto (Bogota, 1992) is a professional in Literary Studies from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Teacher, poet, musician, and theater actor. In 2017, he published his first book of poems, The Faces Behind the Flame. In 2020, he was selected to participate in the poetry festivals Gestos de la Poesía (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá) and Encuentro Poético del Sur in Caracas, Venezuela; and in 2021 he was selected by call to participate in the 31st Medellín International Poetry Festival.
