Poetry

Para Mamita Juana, Papita Pablo, y Padrino Reden

Alma lost an eye when her house collapsed under ash. 
Milo severed his thumb por una bomba. 
Juana married John in Las Vegas.
Ernesto washed dishes in Hollywood until his skin cracked 
while...

Little beast on the metal table, she took
the needle into her forepaw 

and didn’t flinch. The medicinal death
fit itself inside her, ran the blue and red map,

burned up into her lungs and brain
and heart, which slowed,

and she slept until...

Capricorn, hair, bray, and hoof, eater of tin, biter,
bitter, sister, wilder than tame, not quite
gamey as deer, lower cousin to the caribou,
giving rise to tears and the satyr.

in the dream where I run without breasts I am motivated by flight, I haven’t yet begun to unweld the framework, invent new trauma, whip the stitch arching each bosom as victuals dangled, withheld. when I hemorrhage against design it ain’t...

My mother is alive and funny
in the house above the marsh.

I think she does not miss my father much
as he is still alive, though elsewhere.

Flagged to a halt by a woman in boots
and an oiled canvas coat, we stopped for her

orange flag on the highway yesterday in
the first flurries of the season and watched

I’m docked at a lake that

the people don’t attend. 

Machete on my hip to 

make a devil cough up 

I was participating fully in Life,

or so my calendar said,

when I had the spiritually extravagant

gift of being heart-struck,

standing before a painting.

Give me memories as 

slow to leave as snails. 

In foreign    and perhaps 

fragile years    I’ll still be able