Poetry by Juan Pablo Mobili

                    Richard P J Lambert CC



The Wish 

I dreamed my mother was alive and young again
 
Buenos Aires in the ’50s
sitting at the beauty parlor
getting her hair done
talking, of course
 
It’s Saturday
it’s early
she’s drying her nails
and she’s happy
 
I remember
nodding at her
and that she smiled
I remember I only wished the best for her




They Thought They Were Angels 

Those were the years when the Flying Panini Brothers
would soar onto the modest void of their small tent
holding a rose’s stem between their teeth like a bear carries her cubs
 
As imperfect as they were, they thought they were angels;
on the ground they were fallible creatures, but in mid-air
they felt holy, like hummingbirds God made with His own hands
 
Those were the years when young women came back from the prom
with their brand-new dresses ripped under their coats
after some holy boy dropped them off at their homes
 
You could see them driving away, drunk and laughing
down the street, and disappear into a darkness that would last
forever in the young girls’ hearts
 
Those were the years where all of God’s voices led us to silence
to admire men because they seemed to glide under the circus tent,
unimpeached by conscience or society under their tiny capes
 
and now they are beginning to fall one at a time
like the fruit of a misshapen tree that finally dies
like impostors with wings who thought they were angels.
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Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and is an adopted son of the City and State of New York. 

The son of a teacher and a poet, he came of age in his native country during a tragic period of its history, when many thousands of young men and women, who came to be known as the “disappeared,” were unconstitutionally detained, tortured, and murdered.

His poems bear the memory of those times but also embrace the cultural tradition and language of the United States, his home for over 40 years, although he still believes he writes “Spanish in English.”

Alongside with being a poet, Juan Pablo has been a music critic, a professional translator and interpreter in several languages, and, for a number of years, a Leadership Development consultant and coach to organizations around the world.

His writing has appeared, in English and Spanish, in Mutantia and Expreso Imaginario (Argentina); B2 (Germany); and River River Journal, The Poetry Distillery, and First Literary Review-East (United States). In addition to that, he released a chapbook of poems in collaboration with Madalasa Mobili, published by Seranam Press, called “Three Unknown Poets.”

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