Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is an undergraduate student at Cal State Sacramento and the current poetry section editor for the student run Literary Journal Calaveras Station. He won first place in the undergraduate poetry section of the Bazzannela literary award and is recipient of the Warmdal and Willhelm Memorial Scholarships. His works appear online in Carcinogenic Poetry, Sex and Murder Magazine, Softblow Review and  Puffin Circus among others. He lives in Yuba City California and earns his keep as a handyman paying his way through college.

Two Poems (February 20, 2011. Issue 25.)

Pralapan & Visrjan: Talking and Giving Up

Pairings of sound like pairings of color: br-bl-ba-bn.
No, this is br-bl-bz speaking in tongues, pronounced burr-bull-buzz,
the name of a doll—
face rubbed off with alcohol,
bottle of Jack.

This is br-bl-bz speaking in tongues
and who is to say otherwise, other than
br-bl-bz (pronounced beer-bill-bazz)—
the sounds splashing
onto the dark rocks below. Grey rocks
that sprout from the dirt,
from an ocean of self-sustained luminosity,
or dark molten rock—the color of a star’s light, long
extinguished—burning lifeless, the rocks rise wearily,
skeptical of a new light, delightful virgins of the sun.

This is br-bl-bz speaking in tongues
and those rocks that melt on the blue hill
sprinkled with pounds of rotting lavender in early fall
echo back to the other’s waiting below.
This is br-bl-bz (pronounced bar-bell-bizz).
This is why not, we are the why nots,
this is nothing speaking in tongues

Color Theory

Scratch beneath a yellow
belly toad when the damp
moss huddles closer together
in stupid fear of the sun.

My neighbor works for a pest
exterminator company,
he wears white shirts over
blue pants ironed with precision.

As I walk by his yard, I see
beneath his neatly pruned tree,
which he grafted as a sapling to
harvest four different varieties
of peaches on each branch,
a mound of brittle wings of bees.

It was more than wings—
and the bodies with wings,
glistening under an abandoned
hive. Delicate stings of color,
posthumous glints.

Colors fade into extinction; I walk on
and consider how an orchid is
consistent, how they
hide themselves behind razor thin
membranes like a skin tight
condom plunged into a bright
bucket of nails.
I hurry before the toad realizes what I’m doing
And flops back into the darkness of her shelter.