Perfect disc of moon, huge
and simmering
low on the capital’ s filthy horizon — ¡ Ay,
qué luna más hermosa! she says
pushing the stroller slowly down Atocha.
And gorgeous too the firm-thighed
boys from Lisbon
a block away, who work
Kilometer Zero’ s sidewalk, the neon
shoestore they lean against
cupping the flames
of passing strangers.
My shadow followed me to San Diego
silently, she never complained.
No green card, no identity pass,
she is wedded to my fate.
The moon is a drunk and anorectic,
constantly reeling, changing weight.
My shadow dances grotesquely,
resentful she can't leave me.
The moon mourns his unwritten novels,
cries naked into the trees and fades.
Tomorrow, he'll return to beat me
blue — again, again and again.
The sun-face looms over me, gigantic-hot, smelling
of iron. Its rays striated,
rasp-red and muscled as the tongues
of iguanas. They are trying to lick away
my name. But I
am not afraid. I hold in my hands
(where did I get them)
enormous blue scissors that are
just the color of sky. I bring
the blades together, like
a song. The rays fall around me
curling a bit, like dried carrot peel. A far sound
in the air — fire
or rain? And when I’ ve cut
all the way to the center of the sun
I see
Turn it over and look up
into the sphere of heaven.
The tracery is lucent,
light seeping through to write,
white-ink your face, upturned.
Swing it below
and it's a cradle of blue water,
the sea, a womb.
A mixing bowl
for Babylonian gods.
Here, they whirl up the cosmos.
La luna
Sang the miles por los palos
de Nebraska
You bunch of lights
And houses How did you walk
to this place
Buffalo Bill
Better know him some Spanish
Para Horses ride
rubber horseshoes
moderno.
El café
Boiled water/no milk in sight.
Homes that will travel interstate
8 o tomorrow in the morning
for the next edge of town.
There may be chaos still around the world,
This little world that in my thinking lies;
For mine own bosom is the paradise
Where all my life’ s fair visions are unfurled.
Within my nature’ s shell I slumber curled,
Unmindful of the changing outer skies,
Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies,
Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.
I heed them not; or if the subtle night
Haunt me with deities I never saw,
I soon mine eyelid’ s drowsy curtain draw
To hide their myriad faces from my sight.
Three jets are streaking west:
Trails are beginning to fray already:
The third, the last set out,
Climbs parallel a March sky
Paying out a ruled white line:
Skywriting like an incision,
Such surgical precision defines
The mile between it and the others
Who have disappeared leaving behind
Only their now ghostly tracks
That still hold to the height and map
Mama said
it only existed in storybooks
with its soft surface
of bluebells
but there it was
spinning so close to the earth
that it bent
every weather vane in Omaha
it was prom night
and I thought I’ d pluck a few
trumpets
to bring your Grandma
so I pulled our red ladder out
of the garage
and climbed to the roof
I stood up
and imagined I was balancing
the moon on my head
the narrow windows of Union
Station
gleamed like ice chips
Although a tide turns in the trees
the moon doesn't turn the leaves,
though chimneys smoke and blue concedes
to bluer home-time dark.
Though restless leaves submerge the park
in yellow shallows, ankle-deep,
and through each tree the moon shows, halved
or quartered or complete,
