God and Whisky

God and Whisky [sic]

The Flowers of Dawn

written by: Pablo Cúzco

The sun rises blurred and wrinkled | headache waves crash inside my brain. Nuclear explosions detonate and a circular saw cuts its path on a plank of rock maple | loud | it sounds like it’s coming from the room next door. Ave Maria! –in full chorale breaks my ears | a death rattle chokes me. I pull myself up. The bed smells of last night. These sunrises have got to stop.

A yellow moon rises over the rooftops–strikes awe in silence. A dark sky melts into streetlights | wine bottles clutter in the alley | a cat howls. Bleary-eyed and laughing | incoherently | I stumble through a pile of yesterday’s good intentions | crowned with a halo of spirits–God and Whisky (the One and the Same) –my head a cap of moon beams.

A rooster crows. In this city its cry is strangled by the roar of the automobile, the rush of the hour | traffic, and a cop who drags cars through the crossroads–the Altiplano, the drifter’s horse, and the gunslinger on L-dopa, playing cat’s-cradle with twisted fingers and an angry gut | a dog’s hair to bite, a pint of Schnapps, a fifth of Tokay–spin dry, cold rinse and repeat.

​the flowers of dawn
seek bliss and release
​find a dark slow suicide

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Pablo Cúzco

Pablo Cúzco is a Latin American poet who grew up living in the Gironde region of France and in Bavaria. He also absorbed his writing influence from the Chesapeake Bay of Virginia, the North Carolina Piedmont, and New York City. In his twenties, he traveled across America with a guitar in hand, writing songs and jotting down memories as he went. He is now living in the Southwest with his first love, his wife Maria. After raising a family, he has had time to reflect and share those songs as stories, poetry, and prose. Pablo has works upcoming at Meat for Tea – The Valley Review. You can read some of his earlier poems at The Ascentos Review, The Big Windows Review, Califragile, theZenSpace, Contemporary Haibun Online, Underfoot Poetry, and The Wagon Magazine. Some of these publications have recently gone offline, but you can still find his works in progress at the website, PABLO CÚZCO: The evolution of the poetry of the Americas.

Latest posts by Pablo Cúzco (see all)

• God and Whisky - February 26, 2026
• Pack My Bags - October 17, 2025
• Spotlight On Writers – Pablo Cúzco - September 13, 2025