"Spirits" by William Archila

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( July 18, 2018 [Spirits]( [William Archila]( At daylight, he surrendered to the gutters’ 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 procession—Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White, 1955— 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. [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2018 William Archila. Used with permission of the author. [William Archila reads "Spirits."]( About This Poem “Back in the days of my MFA in Oregon, I wrote a couple of lines about picturing Felix the Cat totally drunk when I’d hear Perez Prado’s version of ‘Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White.’ I didn’t 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, I’m 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.” —William 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. [more-at-poets]( [The Gravedigger's Archaeology]( Poetry by Archila [The Gravedigger's Archaeology]( (Red Hen Press, 2015) "Cumbia de Salvación" by Leticia Hernández-Linares [read-more]( "Flowers from the Volcano" by Claribel Alegría [read-more]( "La Cachiporrista" Alexandra Lytton Regalado [read-more]( July Guest Editor: Adrian Matejka Thanks to Adrian Matejka, author of Map to the Stars (Penguin Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about [Matejka]( and our [guest editors for the year.]( Help Support Poem-a-Day If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a [monthly donation]( or [one-time gift]( to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today’s poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038 From Our Sponsors [Advertisement](