KEEP PLANNING time / space / about #017 Israel A. Bonilla 3 Poems from Lyrics

Editor's note: Lyrics is a poetic cycle on Comenius's Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658). Lapides Clad in vestures deliberately gray, with an air of asperity, I welcome a vantage point  impervious to the pressing minute. An outline of drama is disclosed. Deadening of the heart—white heat. A surfeit intimates verve. Heights are likewise falls. For them I cease. What is in place? Arbor To rest amid mire and mirth, radiantly  embattled, is an exigence of soul, for it is only then that one knows: I am substantial, even if asprawl. Even if splendor, ever capricious, serenely aloof, descends, departs, in a single sunset. I hold. Austere yet amenable to song, a sight and shade for all who stray. Fructus arborum A form of layer is the lure: all appearance to the indurate heart, all essence to the frangible mouth. Always in spite of—duration. Being of another being, to another, for another, advent of time replenished. Toward the fullness of circumlocution, implacable, tend the roots.

*** Israel A. Bonilla lives in Guadalajara, Jalisco. He is author of the micro-chapbook Landscapes (Ghost City Press, 2021), the short story collection Sleep Decades (Malarkey Books, 2024), and the pamphlet Phoretics (Paradise Editions, 2025). His work has appeared in Your Impossible Voice, Firmament, Able Muse, Minor Literature[s], new_sinews, Exacting Clam, and elsewhere. 18 July 2025