FLORICANTO ISSUE Juan Felipe Herrera   BUSMAN after Benjamin Peret across the desert rushing the geraniums conference with crows speak about giant exiles fox-trot from Alabama poultry plants in festival aprons with the names of the fuschia ostrich & the badger woolly foreman their addresses still emblazoned inside their smoke-filled pockets down to the laces democratic investigators ICE & the busman yes you busman why didn’t you escort them to the governor’s palazzo why didn’t you bring up the questions of apocalypse why didn’t you dance on the Chrysler engine & orate Dante’s ascent onto the tenth ring they would have honored you in their grilled caves infinite yet impossible the shore their shore yes the one oozing with pass-cards & pajamas now my hands are bloody with this news i pick up flowers for my lover before we dance they elongate & rotate they plead to work they want to dig spill a seed but the earth is out busman   Juan Felipe Herrera was born in Fowler, CA and has lived in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. He is the author of twenty-eight books, including young adult novels, children's books, musicals, and plays. Herrera currently serves as the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair in the Creative Writing Department at UC-Riverside. He is a recent winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. He lives with the renowned performance artist, Margarita Nirvana Robles.   Published in Volume 13, Number 1, Winter 2012.