Catfish McDaris (Western Voices 2023)

Bio: Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. He’s been active in the small press world for 30 years. He’s recently been translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Yoruba, Tagalog, and Esperanto. Catfish McDaris’ most infamous chapbook is Prying with Jack Micheline and Charles Bukowski. He’s from Albuquerque and Milwaukee.

 

Mexican Love

for Aida

 

I never knew why you

came back or why you

left.

 

Just be my eternal

Valentine.

 

Emiliano Zapata emptied

his pistols into his

sombrero.

 

I listened to the silence

and it listened back.

***

 

Mezcaline Fireflies 

Vanilla mezcal in the indigo sky 

fireflies make love and war high 

 

Frida cut off her long ebony hair 

and threw the tendrils to the wind 

 

Diego wept blood seeing his lady in 

a man’s suit a monkey on her shoulder 

 

The hair took root and grew as peyote  

cacti orange and lime trees figs grapes 

 

The wind stole the hair and spread it all 

over the world Mexican wisdom paint 

 

A wounded deer punctured by arrows at 

Casa Azul her heaven she will never die.

***

 

Van Gogh and Miles Davis

I see ears in the swirling starry night. 
The sky is drunk, the sun puking lemon 
juice, the moon has a toothache, the lady 
asked the dope fiend to come to talk to 

Jesus, he stinks of absinthe and funk. 

Sometimes at night I meet 
myself when I was young, 
I disgust myself now 

What color is the wind? 
What color is an orgasm? 
What color is death? 

There is no sea of tranquility 

There’s no such thing as a small miracle 

Drinking Mexican coffee as black as death 
Lady Gaga drives up in a dirty Mercury, 
they head to the Valley of Rhinoceroses 

Listening to Swordfish Trombone and 
Bitches Brew overlooking Mexico City. 

***

---

Western Voices 2023 :: Setu, February 2023

Catfish McDaris (Western Voices 2022)

Bio: Catfish McDaris has been published widely. In the Louisiana Review, George Mason Univ.Press, and New Coin from Rhodes Univ. in South Africa. His work has recently been translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Mandarin, Yoruba, Bengali, Tagalog, and Esperanto. His 30 years of published material is in the Special Archives Collection at Marquette Univ. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Wild Horses Dancing 

 

My woman is a mountain asleep 

lying on the mirage horizon, she is 

under my skin like a vitamin, a cold  

tall can of Coors sweating between  

 

My legs, that ignorant oil does not love 

me, nothing is jake, makes me steal 

dance smoke funkified loco weed  

living in shadows, chasing clouds 

  

Bison, coyotes, jackalope, long horns 

stampeding across the chaparral, red- 

tailed hawks, roadrunners eating rattlers 

eagles with Gila monsters in their talons. 

***

Thoughts For Prince Corso

   

Known as the fourth musketeer of 

the Beatnik Kings, D’Artagnan to 

Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs 

  

Did a deuce for stealing a dress, put 

in Clinton, the poets’ prison of Dannemora 

self-taught word man, one of the best, saw 

Ginsberg at the Pony Stable headed west 

  

Met the West Coast Beats and saw Henry 

Miller, read in the nude in Los Angeles 

blowing away avant-garde minds 

  

Just a Minnesota lad like Dylan and Prince 

wrote “Gasoline” “The Happy Birthday 

of Death” later taught poetry in Greece 

  

Married Sally November and twice more, 

finally, substance abuse beat him down 

Mr. Corso was free like the wind, love 

hate happiness nothing else to live for. 

***

Mephisto Fandango

The dawn sunlight danced through

the prickly pear spines creating

shadows and rainbows on Ramona’s

sleeping face, she had suggested we

Use the cacti to protect us from night

creatures, I got up quietly and built a

mesquite fire, we had trout we’d caught

I rolled them in corn meal, salt, and chili

I could see Ramona’s nostrils dilated and

a smile was splitting her face, I asked her if

she had any dreams, she said no, I told her

about mine, while in the army we played

Poker in big tents, there were big snow

storms where I was stationed, the same

place as Elvis Presley, she took over the

cooking, knowing that sometimes my dreams

Were long winded, I told her we ran out of 

beer, so we sent Fatty to buy a case or two,

he got his name from being a fat boy, we 

waited and waited, finally we all went looking

For him, there he was lying in the road, with

beer cans everywhere, he was moaning and

groaning, there was a tire track across his fat

belly, we all gathered the beer, but Fatty died

“That was damn near your longest and most

boring dream story ever,” I put on some White

Stripes Seven Nation Army and Jolene, we had 

fish, danced our asses off, and smoked a phatty.

***

---

Setu, April 2022