Simon Anton Niño Diego Baena

Golgotha

The blood, heavy: like an ancient pillar.
And here, New York is quiet in April

as the man stumbles into the dark
to find the light. But it has always been

there. Clear as a denuded mountain.
I remember grandma kept fidgeting

the rosary with her pruney fingers.
Christ was crucified in the morning

and expired in the afternoon. Pigeons
proclaimed the event with coos.

The exact time the smell of freshly baked bread
and aroma of coffee pulls you in for a feast.

When the dead often has excuses.
 

Specter

Outside my window, every Sunday of the first month,
around 12 midnight, I always see an old man kneeling
at the door of the cathedral holding a candle, murmuring
a prayer—or a curse. In the background, the trees stood
in silence. Like a dagger, let his night remain undisturbed.
With the moth suffocated streetlight and the moon behind me,
I went back to bed thinking of my father desperately trying
to reach me when I stare at my face in the mirror.
 

Simon Anton Niño Diego Baena is the author of The Magnum Opus Persists in the Evening (Jacar Press). His work has appeared in Louisiana Literature, The Louisville Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Phantom Drift, among others.