The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
--Rumi (1207-1272 CE)
It isn't often that you find an author who isn't clamoring for publicity, or take himself too seriously. Imagine my surprise and delight in encountering a Chicago area poet who feels that his work — strong, deeply felt and beautifully rendered — should just stand or fall on its own.
Niño was the winner of the Sister Cities Award in 1992, an award that took him to Mexico City on a reading tour to help foster stronger cultural ties between Chicago and Mexico City. He was the recipient of the Significant Illinois Writers award in 1993, presented by Gwendolyn Brooks, Poet Laureate of Illinois. His poems have appeared in anthologies such as Power Lines, published by Tia Chucha Press, and New Chicano/Chicana Writers, published by the University of Arizona Press.
Niño is currently waiting for his Muse to return from holiday in Barbados (why there? she's got a lovely tan already), at which time they will exchange pleasantries, then get down to the important business of editing through his new manuscript, Rough Sutra, and if the sky remains blue, it may be published by MARCH/Abrazo Press in 2008. Raúl Niño lives in Chicago.
My dawnis your dusk.
Your eyes close,
mine open.
Moon seduces oceans
to fill your shores.
Meanwhile, the gravity of lovers
strolls freely,
corralling history
into the palms of fidelity.
Soft laughter beneath your sky
makes the long journey toward mine.
My dusk
is your dawn.
My eyes close,
yours open.
- My hands are restless dreamers
that awaken early,
seeking your geography,
two hardy explorers
hiking over valleys and hills
of your warm terrain.
They need no light,
these faithful adventurers.
Memory guides them
through receding shadows
of familiar textures,
soft nostalgia
their only goal.
- Moonless sky begins to change,
hues blend,
merge lines of ocher,
heaven and earth divide.
These palettes of insomnia,
are summer’s solstice hesitant shades.
A restless night of desire is over,
my lover sleeps in her foreign thoughts,
loosely tucked between thin sheets,
with the curve of her spine
exposed to my memory,
while the sovereignty of her bed drifts away.
Landlocked I watch as
navigating light fills her room,
familiar patterns and textures return,
clothes, furniture and floor,
waiting to be touched again.
of an unmarried uncle,
hesitant to linger too long.
At such an early hour, such a late thought,
as a Moorish moon searches for a prayer,
Nordic clouds descend for a closer look
swift and low.
Overhead a wobbly V formation
falls across the sky like loose string.
I listen to the honks and squawks
of these geese fade away.
And the wind picks,
leaving a rain of leaves to bury my world in ocher.
- My son wakes up before me,
so early that robins
still dream.
He crawls over
his sleeping mother
whimpering half words and
scattered phrases.
He pokes my shut eyes,
pulls my ear with a strong grip,
and makes a muffled cry
pointing into the darkness.
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