For Barbara

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My friend Barbara disappeared three years ago this week.
Whereas on one hand we pretty much know what happened to her and where she is, no one ever found her.  I am not convinced that anyone truly looked.  But I, for one, refuse to forget her or pretend that everything is alright. 

where are you barbara
with your tame dogs and
bright strings tied
about your wrists?
where are your brown arms
swirling skirts
and painted toes?

the wind is your breath;
your gray eyes are
rain clouds.
spiders are spinning
locks of your hair.

open your mouth and
speak, barbara.
tell me a story,
draw me a picture.

the ocean is salty and
warm like
your blood.

does it mutter
your secrets?  it is
guarding your bones?

Hielo

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otra vez
me esperaste
detrás de la cortina
del sueño

te sentaste
en el suelo
cerca de la puerta
volviéndome a ver
con esos ojos
pozos

me hablaste por
primera vez
por fin después
de tantas

en verdad
me has estado siguiendo estos
veinte años sólo
para pedirme
hielo?

 

Short Hair Like Boys (from “When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder”)

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(from When The Roll Is Called A Pyonder, release date: August 19, 2014 by eLectio Publsihing.)

*****

Mommy washes our hair on Saturdays so it will be clean for church.  Me and Wanda have long hair and Mommy has to wash it because we can’t.

I don’t like it when Mommy washes my hair.  Sometimes I cry.  She washes me with pink soap in the bathtub and then I have to turn around so the water is coming out behind me.  The water is coming out and she pushes me over backwards until my hair is under the spigot and my hair gets heavy and my head feels like it’s going to fall off.  Then I can sit up and Mommy puts shampoo on my head.  She scratches it all around with her fingers.  She does it hard and it hurts.  I ask Mommy does she have to do it with her fingernails? She says Oh Honey I’m Not Using My Fingernails, I Just Use My Fingers.  Then she doesn’t scratch quite as hard anymore until next time.

When it’s time to rinse the shampoo out she makes me put my head back under the water again.  I get to put a washcloth over my eyes so shampoo doesn’t get in them.  Water is splashing all over my face and my nose tickles and I can’t see and I can’t breathe.  Mommy rubs out the shampoo and I have to hold my head up and I can’t hold it up anymore.  But if I sit up I get in trouble and if I put my head back the whole way all the water goes in my nose and mouth.  I wish we could have short hair like boys but the Bible says we can’t. It’s not fair but we have to obey it.

After bath, Daddy combs us.  Daddy always says our hair is pretty and it smells good like shampoo.  He says I Smell ‘Poo for shampoo and we laugh because we aren’t allowed to say that word.  Daddy can say it though when he means shampoo.  If Mommy hears him say it she says Lamar and looks at him out of the top of her eyes.

In the summer Daddy takes the blue comb and sits on the porch and combs out the tangles.  I wear my Noah’s Ark jammies.  We listen to the peepers and Daddy tells me about animals like peepers that are really little frogs and about fish that live in the pond and bumblebees that live in nests and worms that live in the dirt.  He tells me stories about when he was a little boy.  In the winter we can’t sit outside, we have to sit inside and me and Daddy watch Hee Haw on tv while he combs me.  People on that program talk funny and they walk around in the cornfield and Miss Minnie forgot to take the tag off her hat.  Mommy doesn’t like Hee Haw and she doesn’t like Daddy to watch it, or us.  She says it’s too dumb and she tries to wash our hair during it so we can’t watch.

Everything But the Words / Todo Menos las Palabras

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(The same poem first in  English, then in Spanish because I try to pick my favorite one and I can only pick both)

i remember the night you
borrowed flavio’s blue car
the bottom halves of trees i
could see through the
window where
we stopped along the
dusty road

what did we say to
each other
that night i
remember it all but
the words

* * * * *

recuerdo la noche en que
prestaste el coche azul de flavio
los troncos de los árboles que
veía por la
ventana donde
paramos en el
camino polvoroso

qué nos dijimos
esa noche yo lo
recuerdo todo menos
las palabras

(from Tell Me About The Telaraña, 2012)

The Same Boots

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The headline says, “Nicaraguense Muere Atropellado” but they don’t give a name or show a face. There are policemen in the photo, a dented car, a man’s legs on the ground, cut off by the photo frame. There must be a thousand Nicaraguan men in this city and one of them failed to look both ways.  I start to turn the page and then I see the boots.

I feel my heart seize and the shock wave goes through me to my fingers and toes.

Those are his boots.
No, they’re not.
We bought them in the market in Rivas.
No, they’re not.

I look as hard as I can at the photograph. I hold it closer. I hold it farther away.

The buckles are different.
No, they’re not.
The strap is different.

The truth is I can’t really see the buckle or the strap.

“No identificado,” it says, “en Bajada Grande.”

Why would he have been in Bajada Grande?
It’s a free country.
He doesn’t even know anyone in Bajada Grande.
Those are his boots.

I would know. I didn’t want to buy them for him. They were so expensive; so much more than what he really needed. But he wanted them. He tried them on and said they were perfect. And they were really gorgeous black boots. They made him look sexier than ever. I wanted to say, “It’s too much, amor. This money is all I have and it seems like so much to you but it is nothing. Nothing. I have to get on a plane and fly away. I have to go places and do things and I’m not really your wife or even your girlfriend. I’m using you.” I bought him the boots.

I didn’t buy him those boots to die in them.
They’re not the same boots. They’re different.
You can’t prove they are.
You can’t prove they aren’t.

My God I never wanted to see him again. He stalked me, pursued me, terrified me. But I didn’t want him to die in the street atropellado with his boots on. I wanted him to wear the soles through dancing with girls young and beautiful as he.

Is he dead?
Is the city safe, now, for me?
Can I stop walking with my head down between bus stops?
Glancing over my shoulder to see I’m not being followed?

I am dizzy.

Say what you want, I know those boots.
They’re not the same boots.
Is he really gone? Am I safe now?
You’re paranoid.

I don’t know which voice I want to be right and which I want to be wrong.

All I know is that I know those boots.
They’re not the same boots.

Glass Windows

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trapped inside
i stare through glass windows
at the sky
separated
from the sun and rain

i would give my life
to be a leaf
making sugar from sunshine
even only for a season

i would be a bee, my
face buried in flowers and
let winter kill me
once and for all
when it comes,
dissolve my little wings
in its rain that
taps chilly fingers against
glass windows

Daniel

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Daniel hates to work. Every day he throws back his head and laughs, says he’s celebrating El Día de San Pepino. El santo de los perezosos, he says.

A woman will kill him someday. His first wife didn’t succeed but sooner or later a less frightened one will; his first wife was a child. Daniel awakened to find 14-year-old Susana holding a butcher knife to his throat, but she was too afraid to push it in. He laughs about the wild times he had while she waited for him at home. That was back when he’d won the lottery and for two years he had it all—money, a motorcycle, a young wife.

Daniel always laughs. He lives with his mamá and he shrugs. Things didn’t work out.

Daniel, él que dice que se casa el treinta de febrero. Daniel, who can win and lose and never notice the game.