Mario Duarte

Because it would not stop

ringing the man cut off his left ear.

He tossed it to the dogs. Still hungry,
they would not stop howling.
So, the man took care of them.
And still his ear kept on ringing.

To the bluff by the river, he walked,
a modern day siren in his head.
When he listened to the rapids,
the ringing stopped—drowned.

Walking back home, the ringing
started again, louder than ever.

At home, in the garage, he took
a chainsaw to his head.
As his head rolled away,
a bloody football, he swore.

“Fool, look at what you’ve done!”
His poor aching brain grumbled
“Put you damn asshat back on!”

The man tried but his arms refused
to move. His legs quivered.
In oily darkness, his torso sulked.

“There is no end,” he thought
but then a shadow dropped
over his eyes, and his mind
was a slowly opening curtain
of night and the stars started
singing. Again, the ringing stopped.

The man was happy for the first
time in decades, but when
the stars stopped singing, well,
he knew the ringing would never
never stop, could never stop for him.

Mario Duarte is a Mexican American writer. He is an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate who lives in Iowa City. His poems and short stories have appeared in Arkana, Emerald City, Ocotillo Review, Red Ogre Review, and Rigorous, among others. Recently, he published a poetry collection To the Death of the Author and a short story collection My Father Called Us Monkeys Growing Up Mexican American in the Heartland will be published soon.