ROBERT FERNANDEZ

kiss me on the lips






aspic crown






guttural, shaky
diamond nets






Alice in Chains






eating red
hots and sun
spots on
a date with
Lucifer






seashore
awe fur






hoar
roar






Für
Elise

dragging
flying fish

(keys)

across
the surface

of the C






For
Prometheus

dragging
hot chains

(rain)

across
the surface

of the ocean






again, a way, away, to day, today

again
a way
away
to day
today






popcorn

approaching the ampitheater's edge

little red kernel in Jupiter's waist

Antigones unfold space

blood and water wilt us

worlds die and are born

celebrants

obedient servants

towers falling, laughing

with Leibniz at the beerhall

spilling from the couch like diamonds






Love       (tie-die sky        gods like popsicles)

Aph-
ro-
di-
te
Aph-
roe-
die-
tea
Af-
ro-
tie-
dye
tee
drip-
ping
down
my
arm
makes
the
world
glow
red






I love,
this I
know






I love
this, I
know






I love
this I
know I
     feel
     I glo



                               do
                               you
                               wanna
                               glow?

                               baby
                               we
                               can
                               glo

                                                      [out]

Born in Hartford, Connecticut and raised in Hollywood, Florida, Robert Fernandez is the author of the poetry collections We Are Pharaoh (Canarium, 2011), Pink Reef (Canarium, 2013), and Scarecrow (Wesleyan, 2016). He is co-translator of Azure (Wesleyan, 2015), poems by Stéphane Mallarmé. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, his poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, A Public Space, The Believer, Chicago Review, and elsewhere. A portion of his translation of Félix Morisseau-Leroy’s Antigone in Haiti appeared in The Brooklyn Rail’s InTranslation series, and he has translated poems by José Asunción Silva and Benjamín Puche for the central Bank of Colombia.