What can I tell you (an Ars Poetica)

What can I tell you?

I confess
from you I learned
sweat is poison as well as nectar,

& there is no good word
for how I linger as you exhale.

I confess
I am a cracked mirror,
& you are a stone, a bird,
starlight tickling the fractures.

From you I learned jilting
doesn’t require stepping away.

I confess
I drink your furious glow
like the color black,
like a poet

whose mouth is a bucket,
whose head is an ocean of roses.

Roberto Carlos Garcia’s published works include the chapbook amores gitano (gypsy loves) (Červená Barva Press, 2013), his poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in The Acentos Review, Lunch Ticket, Bold As Love Magazine, Entropy, PLUCK!: The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture, The Rumpus, 5 AM Magazine, Wilderness House, Connotation Press—An Online Artifact, Poets/Artists, Levure Litteraire, and others. His translation of Pablo Neruda’s Heights of Macchu Picchu & Other Poems is forthcoming from Červená Barva Press in 2016. A native New Yorker, Roberto holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry Translation from Drew University and is Instructor of English at Union County College.