This book is dedicated to my late father, who first introduced me to poetry; to my mother, who taught me to love words; and to my dearest son, who taught me to embrace life.
edited by Jazno Francoeur
©2026 by Jazno Francoeur. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. Book design by Jazno Francoeur
To view Hallucinations online, including deeper analysis of prosody, forms, and research, visit jaznoblog.wordpress.com.
ISBN TBA
Library of Congress Card Number: TBA
Hallucinations
Table of Contents
|
I. Low Country |
II. High Ground |
|
III. Protocols |
IV. Oracles |
|
V. Systems |
VI. Mythos |
|
VII. Colloquies |
VIII. Diversions |
There is too much truth in this; any hand should hesitate to dilute it. The question is what do you do with such a well-crafted hatchet? … Secrets create unexpected worlds. Wrap it in a T-shirt, tie it to your leg and cover it with your trouser; pretend it isn’t there. Only you know the use of the holy paraphernalia.
— Robert Lee Francoeur
Low Country
The Magic Blanket of Laura Vicuña
As a child, my blanket shielded me
from dangerous men, or so I thought.
When Señor Mora caressed my feet
I made a prayer to that tattered cloth
to make him leave my room, and he did.
When rebel bandits burst through our door
to threaten my family, I hid
under its soft skin with my sister
until they left the estancia.
On the day the Chimehuin River
flooded its banks, my blanket vanished—
later that night, I would discover
mother whispering by the fireplace,
Señor Mora caressing her face.
Day of the Dead
The skeleton with a tan sombrero
copulates with a swollen woman.
There are five houses with broken windows,
behind them a rainbow fence, two mountains.
This is a portrait of you together,
the empty houses you have left behind,
the fence between you and the deep river,
the black mountains you escaped to at night.
I still remember you, señor, fondly,
the moribund thief from a shanty town
stalking my family in the dry streets—
who shook the shards of my banjo down
from the red oak tree, as I stood there dazed
behind the house— while at dusk, drunk gringos
licked their lips and mariachis played
double-time around the corner, cantando:
O La Pistola y El Corazón
O La Pistola y El Corazón.
Fall River at Midnight
Fireflies brighten the grass by the shore
as you pass under the low-hanging trees
in your father’s green aluminum boat
above the submerged farms and rock quarries;
setting the lines on the branches, the leaves
just skimming the surface, you navigate
through an alcove, then settle in between
the bait cooler and the motor to wait.
At times, you see a faint light reflected
from the lamp on a small school of minnows
like silver coins flipping end over end,
disappearing in the darkness below,
while your father gathers a large white net
and casts it out, as if making a bed.
Driving through Salina
I counted the telephone poles as fast
as the horizon could generate them.
Anything to ease the boredom: a vast
row of crosses passing along the edge
of the Kansas interstate—Spartacus
and his defeated men decorating
the Via Appia. There was a verse
my father wrote in the military:
six million miniature Jesuses
marching into the distance. As a boy,
I would sit on his lap to Angelus
as he read from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. The void
is the hitch between those boxcars, he said,
connecting one brief moment to the next.
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