News of the Unconscious They have crammed us into a windowless van for the short ride to Tompkins Square Park. Are we prisoners of war, refugees, both? The rules at this camp are vague. If we run across the lawn, reach the basketball court and race back through the tents and pushcarts, sign a couple of forms, the guards will let us go “soonish.” Under a jagged splay of clouds and filthy gulls the guitar in my hands snaps with a crunch. Everybody claps along to the tune I manage to extract from the mess of splinters, strings, and feathers. ∴ Cots and stretchers are laid out in the lobby or wedged between bookshelves. But it’s on the mezzanine of this library turned into a makeshift hospital where I find my friend face up reading The Night Face Up by Cortázar. And as I help him to his feet our bodies begin merging with one another, his full bladder becomes my about-to-burst sac, the pain in his phantom left arm bleeds into mine. And what I think it’s my voice is just his own coming out of my mouth, one among many more rising from the beds, alive.
—Submitted on 10/06/2022
Guillermo Filice Castro is the author of the chapbooks Mixtape for a War (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018) and Agua, Fuego (Finishing Line Press, 2015). His work appears in Allium, Barrow Street, Brooklyn Rail, Court Green, Fugue, The Normal School, and other journals. Born and raised in Argentina, Castro lives in New Jersey.
Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered for publication.
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