Free Verse

People would come to my great-grandmother’ s house.
She was in a room. They would stay in the kitchen.
The words their words rolled like cars by on a train
Here from somewhere else and going somewhere else
Moving on faster almost than we could read them,
Sound them out my brother and me with our small mouths,
Chessie, a cat, see? the Erie, Santa Fe, Ferrocarril,
Ore cars from the Southern Pacific, brown
And all the numbers of all the engines.
The words they rolled easier, fat and longer

1.
Last night I dreamt I was Pancho Villa —
ragged, bandoliered, reckless.
I dreamt my poetry at the end of a pistol,
felt it kick nearly out of my hand.

But this morning I awoke again
white and assimilated into these cobwebs
of my half-self. When did I forget
my mother? Sometimes Spanish

syllables creak like wobbly shopping cart
wheels, I have to lean against accent,
fill myself with verbs: necesitar, hablar, poder.

A cigarette kiss in the desert. The wind-proof arc
of flame sparks inside the speeding Buick. Menthol:
a break from the monotony of highway nicotine —
most intimate of drugs. Make this mean sorrow
or thermodynamics, whatever small gesture
there is time for. Light another one, the vainglorious

At the farmer’ s market in Rosarito, Mexico,
a man touched my arm.
He sat on a stool at a wooden table,
and in the center,
a blue pitcher of water beaded under the sun.
Hunkered over his lap,
he worked with a gouge on a block of walnut,
and he blew at the dust,
and the dust swirled in the breeze.

Breakfast, and I’ m eating plain yogurt, figs from my garden, and honey.
I’ m sitting in a lawn chair on the backyard patio —

life is good, and the sunlight warming my lap and the pages
of a book remind me of Tucson

and the subterranean apartment I rented alone and far from home.
There was a sofa in front of my one window

where at noon the sun burned briefly on the cushions as starlings
stirred in the trees with their admonishments.

Yesterday afternoon, I hung a framed print in the living room —
a task that took two head-throbbing hours.
It’ s a wedding portrait that we love: Frida and Diego Rivera.
I wonder how two people could consistently hurt each other,
but still feel love so deeply as their bones turned into dust?
Before Frida died, she painted a watermelon still life;
before his death, Diego did too.
I want to believe that those paintings were composed
during parallel moments because of their undying devotion.

Dusk to dawn, sleek skunks enjoy
avocados in my yard. I give wide berth.
Before the first jogger leaves her prints
on pavement, tough raccoons appear.
They pretend they don’ t hear my keys click
but they peek to make sure it’ s me.
Foxes play hide-and-seek,
sometimes on our lawn, other times
across the street, but never after seven;
and brazen squirrels eye me
from the center of the street,
dare me to approach.

THAT ONE, is a poet for all poets
AH, then I would suppose
to be an edwin for all edwins
OH, then there is only one of you
you are being one for
AH, I am one of me
but one is too many for all
OH, then how can this one be for all
when that one is truly for truly’ s sake
Which one?
It isn’ t a which or a what but a be
HMMPF, an ending for all endings
UMMPF, to be a poet for poets
is a mere suppose
BLECHH, you covered suppose in an earlier poem
YUCHH, but no one heard it

Who is quitting dogs today? Making them their sister?
Who is stretched out by a lamppost sibling? Illuminated by ransom’ s note?

I was oblivious to pettiness until I saw its first handle: obey ignorance.
Stomach decisiveness. By that, this decision... no decision.

Let it be to gain all it can in one fetter... but if it be life,
let it attempt a failed recognition.

Let its thinker be the failure. My thinker is failure,
and I want to teach it how to move in this world.

Do you be or live?
To any the other wants.

“Mexican”
is not
a noun
or an
adjective

“Mexican”
is a life
long
low-paying
job

a check
mark on
a welfare
police
form

more than
a word
a nail in
the soul
but

it hurts
it points
it dreams
it offends
it cries

it moves
it strikes
it burns
just like
a verb