The Lingering Wound • poems by Simon Anton Niño Diego Baena

Black and White Reels

In a dimly lit room, a man propped up on a chair tries to console himself. He listens to Chopin’s sad sonata of memory, his pulse slowing to a teardrop, the night silent as a lamp in a distant Gulag.

When the streets are restless and the trees tremble even without the wind, the priest finally returns to the presbytery for dinner. A man puts on his black trench coat, adjusts his watch—5 minutes past 8—then walks through the exit of the old cinema, the sound of sirens all mixed up, like a present-day Gordian knot. The equation is simple: he believes more in ashes than in the crucifix. The city never runs out of vermin, the city is vermin. He writes it down on a piece of crumpled paper, smokes his cigarette, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. In the end, the man I shadowed was myself. From this angle, it’s much clearer. The plot grows horns, not wings.