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July 18, 2018
[Spirits](
[William Archila](
At daylight, he surrendered to the guttersâ
thick cirrhosis, his trajectory
half awake, half anvil from the glass to the killing floor
I was raised in, each thin thread tethered
from the root of a nicotined tooth
to the rusted bars of the slammer. I couldn't tell you why
Felix the Cat came to mind, totally inebriated,
two Xs, bubbles popping, his gait
a saint carried in a processionâCherry Pink
& Apple Blossom White, 1955â
except that my grandfather died
with a bottle in his pocket, his Robert Mitchum
chin & pompadour distilled
from a banana republic in fire, a slow, steady
drinker, perfect fulfillment to drown out
his manhood. There's a certain kind of fix
that falters precariously,
a benediction when they allege
one more drunk for the hood. He didn't matter
to the dispenser nor the riffraff crowd.
Nothing about him capsized, except his compound
of cologne & corrosion. All those rotguts.
All those bums. They didn't matter
to the nation, though they were the nation.
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Copyright © 2018 William Archila. Used with permission of the author.
[William Archila reads "Spirits."](
About This Poem
âBack in the days of my MFA in Oregon, I wrote a couple of lines about picturing Felix the Cat totally drunk when Iâd hear Perez Pradoâs version of âCherry Pink & Apple Blossom White.â I didnât know what to do with that image, so I shelved it away. I brought it back because I found myself thinking about my grandfather, and the fact that he was a drunk, all those drunks from my childhood asleep on the ground, on the grass or sidewalk, under a tree, in the gutter, some related to me, some not. They were not dangerous, but sad clowns. In retrospect, Iâm thinking that they were symbolic of my native country of El Salvador, ridiculously somber, deteriorating while the ugliness of the civil war raged around them.â
âWilliam Archila
[William Archila](
William Archila is the author of The Art of Exile (Bilingual Review Press, 2009), winner of an International Latino Book Award, and The Gravedigger's Archaeology (Red Hen Press, 2015), winner of the 2013 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
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[The Gravedigger's Archaeology](
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[The Gravedigger's Archaeology](
(Red Hen Press, 2015)
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