Life Choices

Powder rises
from a compact, platters full of peppermints,
a bowl of sour pudding.
A cup of milk before me tastes of melted almonds.

It is the story of the eve of my beginning. Gifts for me:

boxes of poppies, pocket knife,
an elaborate necklace
made of ladybugs.

My skirt rushing north

There is something round and toothless
about my dolls.

They have no faith. Their mouths, young muscle
to cut me down.
Their pupils, miniature bruises.

I hear the cries of horses, long faces famished,

one lies in rags on the street
and his stomach is empty
and he wishes for death

one sits with friends at tea and backgammon
and his mind is empty
and he wishes for death

one sits in a straight-backed chair at a desk
and his bank account is empty
and he wishes for death

one lies in bed staring out to sea
and the place next to him in bed is empty
and he wishes for death

one flies back with food in its beak
and its nest is empty
and only this one says
we should give it another try

The driver has no knife. He has no knife, no,
you think, and lower your head into his car.
A ride in the rain? The dark clouds bellow.
You saw him drinking at the local bar,

you think, and lower your head into his car.
Rain taps on the roof, falls on this familiar man:
You saw him drinking at the local bar.
He shrugs and offers up his empty hands.

Rain taps on the roof, falls on this familiar man,
and sugarcane stalks bend in the breeze.
He shrugs and offers up his empty hands.
As sewer pipes burst, flooding the street,

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.

I’ m eight years old and all the rooms
of my father’ s house are larger than life. Two days after my
first divorce, the only landscape I know is simplified, bone-smooth

and

Someone’ s at the door, somebody please get the door
Somebody please get the door.

is

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.

He forgets that he used to call me mariconcito-
that I harbored years of hatred toward him
while hoping to find my real father. My
childhood memories of him reminding me
I was my mother's son, not his. I tried
to poison him once and scattered sharp nails
inside the shoes in his closet. By the time one
of his sons died of AIDS I was already lost
in contempt for the man I blamed for everything.
There was the time I was in love and he met my
boyfriend. Now he forgets to go to the bathroom

I can’ t tell you I had climbed for hours on
ledges and crawled through gaps in the earth.

My hands negotiating
through the teeth of the palisade
lipped under the vineyard of temperate skies.

And I can’ t tell you that I came
onto a ledge within the shelter of a granite roof,
ceaselessly carved by centuries of dripping water.

Feeding from pooled water and singular sunlight
a chamisa plant sat like a chopped wood.

The opposite end of root
speaking for its entirety through
silence and color.

They are thin
and rarely marry, living out
their long lives
in spacious rooms, French doors
giving view to formal gardens
where aromatic flowers
grow in profusion.
They play their pianos
in the late afternoon
tilting their heads
at a gracious angle
as if listening
to notes pitched above
the human range.
Age makes them translucent;
each palpitation of their hearts
visible at temple or neck.
When they die, it’ s in their sleep,
their spirits shaking gently loose

I called the white donkey that hurt my left shoulder
the last time it appeared, ramming me
with its ivory head, cracking my back
to relieve me of worry and hope.
I called the white donkey,
surprised at the sound of my voice.
Scared, I wondered if the white head
would give me its donkey brain,
snowy matter dripping into my ears
like the horse of the first man who fell off,
the donkey teaching me about desire
and the moan, that white hair on the back
of my head that warns me.