PAUL JONES has published poetry in many journals including Poetry, River Heron Review, Red Fez, Broadkill Review, as well as in cookbooks, in travel anthologies, in collections about passion and love, and in The Best American Erotic Poems: 1800 - Present (from Scribner). Recently, he was nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Web Awards. His chapbook is What the Welsh and Chinese Have in Common. A manuscript of his poems crashed on the moon’s surface April 11, 2019 as part of Arch Mission’s Lunar Library delivered by SpaceIL’s Beresheet lander.
Traces of a Portrait of Che Guevara on a Wall in Oaxaca
All that is left of Che are his radical eyes.
Weather and other graffiti took his beret,
but left its red star newly tattooed on the thigh
of a marching nearly nude, but clearly angry,
teacher on strike. Che's eyes are supportive, averted
in the kind of kindness our better elders
show towards the casual way their youngers treat
their brief moments of beauty and power and grace.
The marchers on the wall are so tall, so certain,
so committed. Che sees that he's fine without hair,
or nose, or lips. He is happy with what he sees:
their large homemade signs, their leaderless unity,
their hard won solidarity. Che had gone alone.
He had held the wall for so long, setting the pace
for revolutions. Now he has begun to vanish.
Still his stare sustains his power without his face.
— Paul Jones