I Will Hide In Granada
(Lorca talking to a friend in Madrid, June, 1936)
Madrid is too dangerous now. The sun is snorting in its pen. They will have to release it to the crowd and sand soon. The clouds cannot hold back this sun. They will have to release me to the crowd soon. They have chosen Barrabas.
I will go home to Granada. My father and mother wait for me. The Alhambra waits for me. It’s been too long since I heard a real flamenco song.
It will rain in Granada this week. Thank God for rare Granada rain. It has healed me through the years.
I will hide where the bugs hide, in the wet citrus incense of the Cypress trees. I hid there when my mother was looking for me as a child. She never found me.
I will hide in the glowing green hills behind the Alhambra, where God himself hides to get away from prayers. I have made many confessions there.
I will hide between the conspiracies of men. I will hide between their ruins of drenched trench coats. I will hide behind the Cypress tree until these men pass by, like when I was a child. I went to school with these men. They were boys who spent rainy afternoons killing lizards with slingshots. They have replaced slingshots with rifles and I am a much larger target than a lizard. These men have made allies of lemons and enemies of oranges. Or is it the other way around?
But they will never find me. They will look for me all over Granada but they will never find me. I have never been found before. By anybody. Not in Granada.
I will pass through them all like a breeze through the olive grove.
• • •
After Lorca’s Murder In Franco’s Spain
They interrogate my heart in Alfacar.
They torture my kidneys in Viznar.
They bribe my liver in the Sacromonte.
They use my arms as compass needles
in the Almeria lunar desert.
The gitana singers read the notes in my severed palms.
My head is served on a platter with a bed of full moon
after the final dance.
There is nothing left of me,
there are no more plays,
but they press their hands against stage floors
throughout Granada
to feel for a pulse.
They strike the same piano key
until they get a heartbeat
to kill
• • •
Chris Pellizzari is a poet from Willowbrook, Illinois. His work has appeared in Hobart, Slipstream, Gone Lawn, One Art, Third Wednesday, and Not One Of Us. He is a member of The Society of Midland Authors.