By AIRTON PASCHOA*

five short pieces

Drizzle

It's good to remember you, to remember you even unraveling, diluting yourself into ropes, which I try to cling to, demanding to go down deeper and deeper, barely allowing myself to be caught in the gesture, in the laughter, in the low gaze of black arches, going up, you know god to what sky forgotten from where every now and then you fall miraculously like the extinct drizzle of the city and then I find myself tied, covered, covered, and I fall to bed congested, when with the force of fever I make a thousand statements that you don't understand, neither do I, and we laugh, I mean, you laugh, I'm dying of coughing in your arms, I expectorate, I stertor, all crooked, so glued to your lap, my heart in my mouth beating, I'm scared too, but I open the door and knock the boots, with the canned wind and the vision.

gutter

To Webern

I thought about saying that you were the one passing by, then I thought better of it and thought it was me passing by, then I thought even better and saw that it was us passing by. It is. I thought about saying that I was the one in front, then I thought better of it and I thought it was you who was going ahead, then I thought even better and saw that it was us close by. It is. I thought about saying it was you who turned your head, then thought better of it and thought it was me turning your head, then thought even better and saw that it was us with your head turned. It is. I thought about saying that I, that you, that we, and someone passed by or someone's shadow or someone's leftover and I shut up, or it came in handy. Be, I thought.

abate

the fresh meat
the goose bumps
the pores in bloom
chicken
shudder
nerves in shambles

down the drain of the world
disappearing go
stepped on
repeated
current and recurring
dragged
dragged

a high-pitched almost scream
an almost heart attack
an almost-you

Backpack

Sad, sad, adulthood, I see you squeezing the sheet, and if it was really adultery, just to see you sulk, if it wasn't love, the sad thing, just to see you squirm your eyes, chocho, chocho, suddenly growing in astonishment between arms and armfuls, denying as a lap, you jumping on my back, it was my backpack, and I couldn't get up, I had to spend the whole day in bed, silly little brabinho, a backpack alone doesn't make the summer, spinning around, slipping, rocking girl, cradling me, my god, where are you going, the girl who shouldn't be a girl anymore, ma'am? I can't imagine you except backpacking, on so many slopes, on the usual trip to childhood, because you never grew up, backpacking doesn't grow, does it grow? men miserably grew up, and you didn't have to do it, abandoned, but abandon them, backpack on your back, did you grow up? that my disbelief has not even grown? now that I'm with one, holding back the urge to laugh, with nowhere to go, but going, going, god knows where, with the childish, absurd hope of bumping into you on an improbable playground, eyes suddenly growing wide amazement between arms and armfuls and put you on my back, Backpack, and go out there the way you wanted, not through the window.

Poem just for Manuel Bandeira

To Rita Kehl, who corrected the little poem

It rains. It rains a thin and endless rain. I don't think about the women I loved, I who stopped smoking, nor the women who loved me, I who stopped smoking. I humbly think of the ancient, ancestral feeling that the falls washed away a little the sins of the world. But the rain, thin and endless, maybe just wants to remind you that it never did anything but rush.

*Airton Paschoa is a writer, author, among other books, of see ships (Nankin, 2007).