Tunis Air Flight. February 2019
By Arturo Desimone
From the window-seat,
see the blood moon
aglow and sitting on a black bed.
I want to look longer
but remember an old wives’ tale
about how the moon drags
enough sunlight to mar the vision,
to crack the eyes
or maybe not—remember
the old Samanah’s of lore
of India: Rupee-less, ascetic naked men
still and brown as the tamarisks,
famed for their talent to stare directly
at the sun and remain calm,
keen-eyed visionaries.
Maybe they utilised the moon
to practice, like weightlifters in prison
staring into her,
for hours at turns,
building and thickening the musculature
of their vision, eyes and bare feet that trample.
These do not require cheap X-ray tricks
of seers, or waltzing
through larval plaster walls.
Blood Luna, Kamar al-Ahmar
A glance simply knocks walls down, rams a life
through, into or out of the land, the stone,
projects a mural that would humble
Picasso himself, and Siqueiros,
and Tamerlane’s court painter.
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Arturo Desimone, Aruban-Argentinian writer and visual artist, born 1984 on the island Aruba which he inhabited until the age of 22, when he emigrated to the Netherlands. He later relocated to Argentina while working on projects related to his Argentinean family background. Desimone’s articles, poetry and fiction pieces previously appeared in CounterPunch, Círculo de Poesía (Spanish) Island, the Drunken Boat, The Missing Slate, EuropeNow, the Writers Resist anthology, Al Araby Al Jadeed (Arabic) and New Orleans Review. He performed at the international poetry festival of Granada, Nicaragua. Two collections of poetry and visual art recently appeared in the UK and in Argentina: " Mare Nostrum / Costa Nostra " (Hesterglock Press, 2019) and "About a Lover from Tunisia" appeared in the UK and throughout Africa and in bilingual editions as La Amada de Túnez in his second homeland Argentina in 2020. Turkish people he has met have insisted his first name is Turkish and it sounds like a fine idea.
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