a love poem for a brackish body of water
O lovely river of tears,
your crocodiles have grown
long and fat on your
plenty of small fish.
Your mangroves have leafed
green through the parched
summers of dread.
How like you are to
my blood; how you
taste of it.
How you called to me
in my dreams when
I was nowhere near
and I woke
crying for you.
o my pirate,
where is your ship?
the compass points
to water and
there is gold
calling me from
the sea.
We twist around to
look out the rear window
laughing until tears blind us
and I’m afraid you are
going to back off the edge
in the dark, that we will
tumble over the rocks into the
Pacific but I can’t stop
laughing.
I can see the headlines:
Stoned Americans Back Jeep Over Jetty
Edge, Directly Into Ocean.
I say, “Go slow,” and you sputter that
you’re going all of two miles
per hour but my God being
this close to you makes me
so dizzy I can’t see and my
hair tangles in what must be your
solar wind.
Bright white shapes move
behind us, a group of cows wandering
out onto the jetty to graze,
and you say, “What are those?
People?” and I laugh more because
you’re wasted and they are cows.
My sides hurt and I can’t talk.
But then they really are
other people walking to their cars,
people who got off the boat with us.
I say, “I thought they were cows,” and
then you have to stop the car because
you are laughing too hard and you
tell me I’m crazy which we both
already know.
I don’t say it, but I don’t
care if you drive over the rocks and
we drown together tonight.
Go ahead.
All day we sailed
on the boat with the sun
slathering our skin drinking
rum and everybody kept passing
the joints and singing along to Bob’s guitar.
I never even smoke and I
tried not to, but I would do
anything for you.
Try me, I would.
warm
on the other side of
my eyes
close and
I am home
deep
in the
blue green
breathing of being
alive in the
sunshine moonlight
first place of
ever love for
my bones
my blood
and the waves
siempre salt
water warm
spilling up and over
out from under
sleeping eyes
in the dark
Me hacen falta los temblores
how the walls shudder when
the ground beneath takes
a deep breath and mumbles in
restless sleep.
I miss the soprano of mosquitoes
around the net, cantando
en la noche de enfermedades que me
darían in exchange for
my sweet blood.
Extraño hasta los escorpiones,
their wicked tails cocked against surprise
in my shoes, the folds of towels,
esperando entre las sabanas
at my feet.
In the silent safety of America,
my loud breath keeps me
awake at night en el país de los sueños
donde lo que amenaza es la
soledad.
Cuidado con Ana La Gorda,
everyone says,
dicen que es tortillera, and
they point with their chins to
the neighbors who are
said to have
said that about her.
She roars up to the
house on her red dirt
bike in a cloud of sunshine and
dust, beeps twice and says
Vamos donde me tío a
comer sandía.
I get on.
No tengo miedo de las
tortillas ni de las tortilleras
ni de las fat girls who
drink beer in the cantinas
like men.
Ana La Gorda parks the moto in
deep mango shade
beside Tío Lencho’s watermelon fields in
Bernabela.
Fat green fruits lie in the sun like
luxurious crocodiles
basking between the rows.
On a makeshift wooden bench, Tío
Lencho lops monstrous melons into chunks
with flicks of his slick machete.
Coma, he says.
Coma, Ana explains.
We sit there slurping
like las locas, sweet sandía juice
dripping from our
elbows and chins, making
mini moon craters in the
dust between our feet.
Uncle Roy is the uncle
I don’t remember,
the one who called grandma
on the phone
after Christmas dinner
to say hello.
He was the exotic uncle,
the special one, the uncle
who went all the way west
to Oregon
and stayed.
I know about being the oldest,
about being restless and
how you can love your home
and still not be able
to stay there.
Uncle Roy was the unorthodox uncle
who did what he wanted,
not what he was told.
His mysterious sickness
confounded the doctors and the
analysts who shook their
heads at him as he
walked away.
On his deathbed he
willed us all to eat pie
in his honor—sugar,
in our family, being
the universal language of love.
Now he’s gone again—
off to somewhere we’ve all
heard of, but
none of us have been.
a poem from a very old notebook
(If the jungle could write a poem, it would be this one.)
rise on me
scorch me
head to toe
push yellow fingers
through the millions of miles
to love me
come to me
sliding over my skin
and turn me
yellow, brown, red
i will sing for you
scream for you
howl at the moon
and dance
Si es verdad
que en el cuerpo
humano,
cada célula se repone
en el trascurso de
siete años,
eres, entonces
un hombre nuevo–
y yo soy una mujer
diferente de
la que conociste
al atardecer
con el viento que soplaba
al mar.
Nuestros cuerpos,
hasta las células
cerebrales
donde viven las memorias
más secretas,
nunca se han conocido
el uno sin
el otro.
It begins with the sound of Jorge scraping
the bottom of the pot
metal on metal
at six AM.
I don’t need a clock.
By seven, Yolanda’s radio
will play louder than the rain.
From my thin bed, I
listen to him scraping:
the sound of nothing.
Hunger pangs, they say, dull
if you lie on your belly.
I have been sleeping face down for weeks
since the rains began in
earnest, and the buyer of our earthenware
stopped at the dangerous bridge.
It will rain until October.
He scrapes carefully, filling the morning
with echoes of emptiness.
Each grain of rice will be
gone and there will not be one
spoonful left for me.
Who will believe the hot fat
tears that slide around my
nose and onto the bed?
If I say I have wept for a
plate of rice, who will
not politely cough and look away?.
Watch me dry my eyes and pour
thin sweet coffee
from my cup into the hollow space
between these new hipbones.
Watch me look out
at the rain and not at Jorge
chewing.
I will lie on my back tonight
listening to the thunder.
I will be waiting
when Maria lights the cooking fire
in the morning dark.
It begins with the sound of Jorge scraping
the bottom of the pot
metal on metal
at six AM.
A spark ignites the slow-burning panic
of hunger that
changes everything.
if I were a planet, this
would be my ice age
my interminable winter of
a thousand years
who would believe the
flowers that bloomed here?
who would believe the bees?
the dinosaurs are all dead and
glaciers creep downward toward
my belly
everything has starved for lack of
fruit except the
woolly mammoths hunkered in ice
caves huffing hot breath
no hay
ni una nube en el cielo
detrás de la cual
buscarla
no hay aves
(no hay árboles)
para contarme
donde está
no la veo
en la maleza seca
ni entre las
diminutas flores
volteo piedras y
no encuentro
ni la seña
Talking to Myself 