The Sirens of Valparaíso
Garrett Kurai
images from A Valparaíso,
a documentary film by Joris Ivens
The hillside trolleys slide in opposite directions.
Beautiful women shade Penguins,
with bouquets of umbrellas.
A donkey carries dead fish
in mermaid printed boxes.
A one-legged man climbs
one hundred and twenty-one steps.
Chileans twist on green-gray tiles.
Horses sit and smoke cigarettes.
Arturo Prat Born 1848, Died 1879.
“One descends laughing.”
Men do not know. A mermaid reclines
behind a woman putting on red lipstick.
A bride's veil trails from a descending trolley.
Garrett Kurai’s poems are residents of Monolid, Statement: A Journal of the Creative and Critical Arts at CSULA, (Sic) Vice & Verse, and recited in the Radio Poetique series on the PennSound University of Pennsylvania website. A graduate of NYU’s Creative Writing Program, he lives in his hometown of Los Angeles. When not writing poems, he collects a wall of sound and DJs. His music heroes are Robert Wyatt and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.