The Colonel by Carolyn Forché

This is the only poet I've actually met in person. She came to my undergraduate college and this poem was among the ones she recited. It sums up my undergraduate studies (Latin American politics and Spanish literature and language) rather nicely.

The Colonel by Carolyn Forché

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried
a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went
out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the
cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over
the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English.
Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On
the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had
dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of
bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief
commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot
said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed
himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries
home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like
dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one
of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water
glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As
for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them-
selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last
of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some
of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the
ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

What I'm Listening to: Sloan & Crosby by Catherine Aird

I stumbled upon the Sloan & Crosby series (also known as The Calleshire Chronicles) by Catherine Aird, and I really like it, not least of which is because in at least two books of the series (and I hope more!) the audiobook versions are narrated by Robin Bailey, who did a great job with Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Clocks. Bailey has a low, rumbly, very tired and world weary kind of voice, which is perfect. The stories are cosy, police procedural type of stories but what sets them apart is the dry humor. DI Sloan is helped by DC Crosby who is always making quips, and at regular intervals, Sloan communicates with his superior Superintendent Leeyes and summaries the case or succinctly relates off-stage incidents--and the banter between Sloan and Leeyes is all I could want and aspire to in my own dialogue, sharp and quick and witty and sarcastic and they are so well rendered in Bailey's voice. The first in the series is available A Religious Body on youtube. I had sort of despaired a bit for something to listen to [I'd fallen back on my fave Frederick Davidson reading The Hound of the Baskerville and had been strangely put-off a re-listen of Josephine Tey's The Man in the Queue and A Shilling for Candles] and so I am really thrilled to find an author who is new to me and whose style I really like.