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      September 26, 2022In the Bible No One Appears SmokingFrank Báez

      But what if God or those who wrote the Bible
      forgot to include the cigarettes
      and in reality those Biblical figures
      spent the day puff-puff-puffing
      just like how in the ’50s one could smoke
      onboard airplanes and even on television
      and I imagine those glorious Jews
      raising cigs to their lips
      and expelling smoke from their nostrils
      while awaiting
      visions or God to speak to them,
      and I imagine David plucking the harp
      in a smoke-webbed temple,
      and Abraham chain-smoking
      before deciding to kill Isaac,
      and Maria lighting up before breaking
      the news to Joseph that she was pregnant,
      heck, I even imagine Jesus pulling out a cigarette
      from behind his ear and scratching a match
      to take a breather before addressing the masses
      gathered around him.
      I’m not a smoker.
      But sometimes I get the urge and I smoke
      just like this moment as I watch the rain
      pouring outside the window
      and I feel like I’m Noah when he was waiting
      for the flood to cease, and how he walked
      up and down the ark just
      trying to figure out where he had left
      that damned pack.
      Translated from the Spanish by Anthony Seidman

      from #77 - Fall 2022

      Anthony Seidman

      “In the poetry of Frank Báez, I value the sense of humor, zest for life, fearlessness in melding pop culture with high culture, his fusion of spoken word energy with traditional verse, and his vision rooted in the quisqueyano experience. It was my attempt to recreate his tone by incorporating American slang and humor, and it was an easy fit, as contemporary North American poetry (in English) has influenced his verse. Dominican poetry has been surviving on the periphery of Latin American literature, despite the presence of such luminaries as Juan Bosch, Pedro Mir, and Manuel del Cabral. Frank Báez possesses a major voice, and it is my pleasure to spread the news among Anglophone readers.”

      Frank Báez (Dominican Republic, 1978) is one of the leading poets of his generation, and the recipient of the Salomé Ureña National Prize for Literature in 2009. He is also a founding member of the experimental rock group El Hombrecito.

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