Archive
Olé
by Judith Terzi
after Raymond Queneau
A lover slips off his cotton tee
and flings it on a llama in the páramo.
Caballos spin past like devotees.
Lariats slap the air in tango code.
The Latin state seduces him like sleaze.
The lover speaks his words fortissimo,
chills out like nudists put on ice to freeze.
Supine or prone he relishes the pose.
He’s heard that Buenos Aires is the spot
to sip yerba maté infused with pot.
From Jujuy to the Pole the gauchos dine
on empanadas stowed in leather totes.
This gringa interprets everything baroque.
My lover wishes he were Argentine.
For many years a high school French teacher in Pasadena, California, Judith Terzi (website) has also taught English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria. Her poetry has received prizes and recognition from numerous journals in addition to nominations for Best of the Net and Web. Recent books include The Road to Oxnard and Sharing Tabouli.
Be Mine
by Judith Terzi
O come let all your rabid pleasures prove
On the terrace under eveglom’s span.
I am terra nullius, kaboofa groove
Bust in ne plus ultra retro glam.
I am terra incognita in threads
Of funk. O kiss me, plinth of 2KX.
Let us contemplate the frothy spread
Of sea and see what we can resurrect.
Let your fleshspades guide the quest
Into alcoves and embrasures of the night.
Taste my mantric kisses, those arabesques,
In the clerestories of fading urban light.
Come suspend your hang ups, let us jibe
The architraves of two quotidian lives.
Judith Terzi’s poetry has been widely published in print and on line. A new chapbook, The Road to Oxnard, will appear from Pudding House Press in 2010 as a finalist of note in the 2009 competition. She was a runner-up in the 2009 Alehouse Press Happy Hour Awards. In her other life, she was a high school French teacher and college writing instructor. She lives in Pasadena, California and is terrified of earthquakes.
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The Huancabamba Depression
Here in Peru, the Andes change direction
job markets transmute at home
rain-shadowed landscapes form
ubiquitous suspension
in dry forests where the cordillera fragments
as pleasures cloud
deciduous acacia rise in river valleys
nest eggs drain
sedges and scrophs spread at our feet
foreclosures germinate
the río Marañón rushes through narrow gorges
stress tests pressure banks
angel’s trumpet boast toxic flowers
while bonuses startle
the spatuletail and the tapir live endangered
homelessness surges
here in this tectonic barrier
depression of credit
outside the level ranges of mountain
and mood
by Judith Terzi
qarrtsiluni 