“Judge Santiago Burdon’s poetry is a sophisticated slap in the face. The imagery induces you to clear your throat and shift your weight from one side to the other. Judge doesn’t waste his words in an attempt to make you comfortable. As a poet he delivers defined grit and structured devastation. He speaks in the language of gasoline fumes and stale cigarette smoke. Always honest and fearless, never apologizing. Know that I am a fan.”
S.L. Fleurimont Editor
The Remnant Leaf Journal
Bianca lived north of Albuquerque in the quaint little town of Corrales. She had a small adobe house with a wood burning stove and two fireplaces, Juanito had built for her. She worked for a rich family, caring for their horses and tending their garden. They had chickens and an orchard of apple and plum trees. Her boyfriend, Buffalo played in a country and western band. Buffalo had moved from New York to New Mexico to avoid the fierce winters. He knew about plants and herbs. Buffalo was currently reading Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons. He’d found an abundance of asparagus spears under almost every tree in the orchard. Steamed with butter, garlic, and peppers, the asparagus was delicious. Bianca shared the spears with the owners of the ranch, the Smithe’s. They were usually only in New Mexico in the winters, being mostly snow birds from Boston.
Juanito was Bianca’s brother, he stayed most weekends with her and Buffalo. He worked for the Santa Fe National Forest Service as a surveyor for timber roads and a forest firefighter. Juanito would leave Santa Fe every Monday to spend the week in the forests, staying in government quarters or in motels. He never rented an apartment, so he had a few ladies he stayed with or he’d head south to his sister’s. Juanito’s main lady was a scientist in Los Alamos, she was a bit too serious for him. Her name was Brenda and she loved sex, but needed to be loosened up. Brenda was a brunette with a dynamite figure and a brain to match.
Juanito spoke Spanish everyday on his job, he was the only Anglo. His crew was made up of five men including the crew chief. They would depart from Santa Fe in four wheel drive trucks and head north, unless there was a fire to be fought. The crew often saw an old lady in a sombrero carrying an easel and paint box. She would be out walking near Abiquiu or Ghost Ranch or Taos. Juanito asked about her, they said she was Georgia O’Keeffe, an old gringa painter.
Buffalo’s band was playing at a honky tonk in Albuquerque, he asked Juanito if he wanted to come hear them play. Bianca never went when he played because all the ladies loved his singing and usually wanted the whole enchilada. Juanito never failed to make an acquaintance, when he turned on the charm. The Smithe’s asked Juanito to build them a patio with native stone and a barbeque pit, so he spent a few months coming every weekend to Corrales. There were many rich people that had haciendas and kept horses in the village.
John owned the biggest and most famous rock and roll club in Albuquerque. He was basically rolling in money. He liked the very best pot, liquor, and horses, plus he lived with a Playboy bunny. Toni was a centerfold and Playmate of the year. She was beautiful, lovely, perfect, and when she grinned at you, you were a gone goose. Her hair was golden blonde, upstairs and down.
Juanito happened to pass by John and Toni’s bedroom while delivering weed and she was naked. She made no move to cover herself, she just laughed and smiled mischievously. Toni fell backwards onto the bed and let her legs fall apart revealing heaven on earth with a royal invitation. Juanito was kind of frozen like a statue staring, he had a crowbar erection. He knew right then he was going to tap that ass like a keg of Old Milwaukee.
John asked Bianca to ride his new horse, she asked if he’d been saddle broken. John said, the horse was gentle and tame. Bianca got on the horse and it reared and started galloping wildly away, John was almost shitting himself laughing. Juanito jumped in his truck and chased down his sister on the unbroken horse. Juanito wanted to stomp John face in, Bianca talked him out of it. John had lots of cop friends and low life amigos. Bianca had a good thing in Corrales. That’s when Juanito starting making his plans for revenge, he plotted and schemed and was diligent and patient.
Juanito spent a weekend with Brenda in Los Alamos. He explained what had happened to his sister. Brenda was reluctant at first to help Juanito with his plan, but after some extra special love making, she agreed.
Toni started receiving flowers with poems of love. Juanito asked her to come to Bianca’s house to hear Buffalo’s band practice. He taught her all the latest western dance steps. It wasn’t long before he had her eating sugar cubes and apples from his hand like a fine filly. Soon, Juanito was making passionate love to Toni, while John was taking care of his bar. Finally, one night Juanito helped Toni pack her clothes and they drove north. They camped for a few days in the mountains, near a hot springs, it was a paradise of sheer bliss. Juanito told her about his plan for her to stay with Brenda and take some college courses. Toni agreed if she liked Brenda and they got along. She was fed up with John being a tyrant and tired being a kept woman.
Brenda and Toni hit it off like long lost sisters. They traded off making love to Juanito. He could’ve had them both together, but he preferred to concentrate on one lady at a time. Winter soon came, John had heard rumors that Juanito had played back door man on him, making off with his woman. There was never any real proof of the cuckold. That came later, like having his ugly nose rubbed in horse shit.
The forests became impassible in winter, so Juanito was laid off for four months of the year. Juanito decided to visit some folks back east and take some turquoise jewelry to sell. Brenda and Toni drove him to the airport in Albuquerque. Juanito felt like a king walking through the airport crowds with his two gorgeous ladies. Men rubbernecked with lust, women gawked with envy. There were reporters and cameramen there for the band Jethro Tull’s arrival.
They took photos of Juanito, Toni, and Brenda. The ladies were all over Juanito. Toni was recognized as a Playboy centerfold. The next day the headline in the Albuquerque Tribune read: The Most Beautiful Lady in Albuquerque.
Like me, you shop online for dildos,
vibrators and other sex toys.
I went from fingering my clit to pumping a vibrator
in my pussy while I watched porn.
That drifted into dildos up my ass
and double penetration.
I would buy butt plugs
and walk around the house with them
while doing the chores — vacuuming the rugs,
emptying the dishwasher, whatever.
Now I’m taking my sexual adventures into town:
Ben Wa balls in my ass sitting in a theater,
vibrating panties to the grocery store.
I don’t get caught, but I think about it.
He was the CEO of CEOs.
Hotboxed his spacious workplace
in the clouds.
Felt his heavy eyes fall in on themselves.
The highest office in the land.
Getting on the phone to listen
to some strange voice say a bunch
of even stranger numbers.
Then under his desk to construct a fort.
Shooting staples at imaginary armies.
Looking at his plant in the corner
and wondering about photosynthesis.
Trying to figure out why rain was wet
before the munchies kicked in.
The cricket sings the dark
the dark to sing away.
To his own gut feeling
the frog responds.
The whippoorwill skims the pond,
intercepting in the dark
moth, beetle, firefly;
calls his name the moment he forgets
he has no name, calls his name
the moment he forgets
the moment he forgets calls.
The owl intuits the soul of chance.
The mouse, in owl claws,
with no further complaint
than a phrase of squeaks,
leaves this plane for perhaps a better
place; but the frog, the cricket,
the whippoorwill on it do not bet.
i went dancing with a train
but never got the ride i wanted
sometimes you never reach
the bottom of your depravity
the ghosts don’t even bother
to show up anymore
and the hours and days start
to pile like trash
like old phone books used
for kindling
spread my ashes in a field
and cover them in shit
just an old poet
nothing more
nothing less
some fucking sage that
warned all of you but
none of you ever bothered
to listen
to understand
to squeeze the marrow
out of life before the
powers that be squeeze
it for you
we were once young at this
ready to conquer the world
or something like that
“It sure is beautiful here,” he says, overlooking the thriving nightlife of the city that never sleeps.
“Not yet,” she interrupts, grabbing his hand and pulling him back to reality, her eyes glowing in the black light of the party awaiting them. “But it will be.”
The man hadn’t been seeing the woman very long, but when he knew, he knew, and you know what? He knew. He loved her. He felt alive around her. Something he hadn’t felt in years. Not since his ex left him. No note. No explanation. Just a ghost from his past who left him with the chains that would hold him from his future.
Until he met her. The new woman. The one who didn’t drink but partied like she did. Drinking in a crowded room full of strangers listening to live music while the woman you love dances around you is the very definition of being alive. And that is how he knew. Because he felt alive when he was with her.
“It’s almost time,” she screams into his ear, only slightly audible as the bass kicks in and the crowd looks younger and younger and he starts to get cold feet.
“Maybe we should,” he starts, but she’s not listening. She has put in her air pods, listening to the song he wrote for her. The party becomes a concert and the concert becomes a rave, but she is slow-dancing with the man who loves her and his fear is only outweighed by his need to belong. His need to be alive.
She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a highlighter, marking both of their foreheads with the symbols of her people. Offering protection from a God long-forgotten and incomprehensibly angry. She kisses him. He tastes a mixture of bubblegum and blood. Not hers. Not his. But now theirs.
The lights turn from black to yellow to red and then white and she covers his ears as the hundreds of rooftop dancers and late-night would-be lovers begin to bleed from every orifice, scream the screams of their past selves, and shed their earthly skins, growing wings and fangs and talons and flying off into the night that will know His name again.
All of this, for the man, occurs in silence.
Cars crash into one another. The lights of the city all go out. Fires spread and the prayers of all but the woman go unanswered. He starts to wonder if he did the right thing, as she removes her air pods and walks over to the DJ’s equipment, turning the music off so they can hear the destruction of everyone who hurt her and her kind before she met the man on top of his rooftop after the breakup with the ex that almost did him in.
“It sure is beautiful here,” she says, overlooking the hell on earth that will become her Father’s kingdom.
And, looking at her, directly into her eyes, the man whispers, “It is now.”
He lost her in his River Ouse
Habitual her morbid ritual mood
Upper East Side between Second and First
Sex in the city and the big black hearse
December is cold, but May cherries are red
His love in the tub, in the tub, there she bled
But he is the victim — a fear he can’t handle
Coverage of a congressman’s adulterous scandal.
The boogeyman
Lives inside
My closet.
He has been there
All my life
Haunting me.
For a time I kept
Him at bay by
Sleeping with a night-light
And Grumpy Bear.
But through the years
He has grown
In might and terror.
But I too have grown
In knowledge
And power.
Now I stay awake
In the dark,
All night,
Every night.
With night vision goggles,
Emerson ES1-M, AR-15,
And Grumpy Bear.
We left the Circle of those poets who
had published their friends and the cries of Best
American editors—my guide moved
me out into a desert of cactus.
A group of demons pitchforked two figures
rolling on the ground and, until they saw us,
forced to suck their own dicks. And I was sure
I recognized one—an old teacher. ‘No!
David! What have you done?’ The demons stirred.
My guide sighed. ‘This place all poets should know
is for poets-as-editors who choose
their own poems for publication.’ ‘Oh
David,’ I said. But he pointed at this
companion. ‘Major made me, and besides
my poem was in The New Yorker. His
was in The Paris Review.’ Major cried,
‘So what?!’ I said, ‘I saw your friends above.’
‘But Trump! Defend Democrats!’ he replied.
My guide said, ‘Now on to the Circle of
those who award contests to those they love…’
Horror Sleaze Trash 