This is the sound

            of losing myself:

the drips of continuous rain as it

            disperses itself

            along the wet ground,

***

Where Costa Rican

vines, like syringes,

suck the water

(tender roots

like a child

***

sucking upon a nipple,

absorbing the minerals,

the liquid of dead leaves,

            the innuendo

            of the sun).

***

And how much of a child I am,

            becoming this mud inching

upward along my boot;

            I am sinking,

            becoming a solution

***

Inseparable from this liquid,

            becoming the sound of rain

(or the snapping of the manakin,

            a refined instrument

            with wings like crickets).

***

This sound is an inverted world,

            a fluid world,

beneath the sickle moon

            beneath my feet,

            in pools of rain.

 

 

***

About the Author:

 

At some point Robert D. Montoya was born in Los Angeles, CA.Having grown up in this sprawling setting, much of his writing is latently (and often overtly) influenced by its multi-nodal, concrete urban environment and intermingling rural park settings.Robert attended UCLA, receiving his B.A. in American Literature and Culture with a minor in biological Anthropology in 2003.Things happened.After a relatively-brief tenure at the Historical Society of Southern California as Assistant Director, he is currently employed at the UCLA Library Department of Special Collections.Robert is working toward his Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles, with an emphasis on poetry.

Travel has strongly influenced Robert’s writing, as have literary figures such as Immanuel Kant, William Wordsworth (go Romantics!), Ralph Waldo Emerson (go Transcendentalists!), Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Jorie Graham, and Reginald Shepherd.He currently lives in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles.