Rodrigo Toscano

The Mounds

Tips of spears, pottery shards, how bones lay

Shell’s beach of origin, which way stones point

Mounds not clear to the eyes at first, rising

Kinda mushy (by now) generations

Of grass, of ceaseless rain, blurring the lines

Of forethought, persistence, endurance, wit

Rendering the scene (truth be told) vacant

To eyes and ears tethered to blinking screens

Superstructures driving your sex by bits

You think it was different back the in the day?

Smokey campfires, come gather round, listen

Hear those that came before, left all this junk

As we fast ditch our junk, dreaming deep space

Always deep space is sex as skulls retrieved

Destinations of Things

Consumables, ponder them briefly, breathe

Circuit board mound, forty meters in height

Jakarta slum, pickers climb high to pluck

Teeny, tiny chips, there, there’s a one, breathe

Exhale, what’s stirring behind the curtain?

What’s rattling there? Bring on the chronicler!

Eighty ten kilo buckets in a row

The clunking’s increasing, now fading – gone

Shsh…is that a one? It’s back! Supply line

Tankards! tankards! bring on the sorcerer!

Oh you mother plucker son of a bit!

Breathe, it’s calling out, tankards, supply lines

Bring on the rhapsodist! Buckets, exhale

This micro play of words as chips in play

Rodrigo Toscano’s newest book of poetry is In Range. Previous books include, Explosion Rocks Springfield, Deck of Deeds, Collapsible Poetics Theater (a National Poetry Series selection), To Leveling Swerve, Platform, Partisans, and The Disparities.  His poetry has appeared in over 15 anthologies, including Diasporic Avant Gardes and Best American Poetry.  He works for the Labor Institute in conjunction with the National Institute for Environmental Health Science. He is currently working on research and training projects dealing with Covid-19. Rodrigo lives in New Orleans.