Fleas are crueler at breakfast,
stabbing little tongues that miss the heart.
Connoisseurs of vintage lymph,
they slurp pores like lemon-tea,
burying their lost teeth under wrinkles.
Fleas are amazing:
unlike humans,
they don’t banquet at open wounds.
I learned this by asking a beggar,
an erudite versed in the area.
To find him,
I followed a trail of bleeding footsteps.
If the shoeless soles of his feet
could speak,
they would describe the facial complexion
of this town.
He was standing on the corner he calls home,
like a patch mending the ragged wall.
Ate a lobster yesterday,
but today, he is again a tramp,
and if he threw away all his money
it wouldn’t make him any poorer.
He’s got big hands, a true gift he says,
the envy of other mendicants, even though
he is just an infant who eats boxes full of
oranges in his dreams,
and the list of the things he lacks:
bread by bread, brick by brick,
line by line, stretches into three volumes.
How many coins, I ask, could
A flea infested-child have
if he doesn’t know how to count?
He didn’t answer, kept scratching the flea’s bite
in the place that connects the body
with its shadow,
thinking that the fleas
will not leave any crumbs
tonight.
© Javier Felix ALL RIGHTS RESERVED