i. the positing of space, corporeal history
medium of my body
bent to narrow rivers,
touching of the touch
commits
totem to shape:
jasmine buds,
water poppies open as the mouth.
Propolis and juniper oil
resinous viscera
embowered in trees,
as the meat
within the shell
as the shell before the caw
a bleached weed
a fig
dusted to sweet the skin
egg albumen of peacock
butterfly
held to the ivory of oxen hoof
pulling
the space
between sins I am
as I am so
sometimes <(span class="indent8"/> when the night air feels chévere!
) when i can hear the real sound
of el barrio
on la conga y timbales
coke bottles
& garbage can tops
when i can feel
& reallyreally touch
la música Latina / africana
& the fingerpoppin' soul
emergin from tears / sweet tears of laughter
spring came /
the same way winter left
& summer will come
& summer will leave; slowly
/ when no one's expecting it
when people are tired of waiting
like waiting for welfare checks /
a long wait/ a slow wait
the windows are open
but butterflies don't fly in
to display a sense of love
It is a dangerous thing
to forget the climate of your birthplace,
to choke out the voices of dead relatives
when in dreams they call you
by your secret name.
It is dangerous
to spurn the clothes you were born to wear
for the sake of fashion; dangerous
to use weapons and sharp instruments
you are not familiar with; dangerous
to disdain the plaster saints
before which your mother kneels
praying with embarrassing fervor
that you survive in the place you have chosen to live:
My name mocks me
for I was born at the cost
of my mother’ s life,
earning my father’ s hatred
with my first breath.
All my life
I have scoured a house soiled
with the thick soot of his resentment.
It has left its mark on the walls,
in his eyes, and on me.
All of it I have tried to wipe away.
In my hands I hold a broom,
in my heart —
ashes, ashes.
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
The cruelty of ages past affects us now
Whoever it was who lived here lived a mean life
Each door has locks designed for keys unknown
Our living room was once somebody’ s home
Our bedroom, someone’ s only room
Our kitchen had a hasp upon its door.
Door to a kitchen?
And our lives are hasped and boundaried
Because of ancient locks and madnesses
Of slumlord greed and desperate privacies
“The writer. It’ s a cul-de-sac,” you wrote that
winter of our nation’ s discontent. That first time
I found you, blue marble lying still in the trench, you, staked
in waiting for something, anything but the cell of your small
apartment with the fixtures never scrubbed, the seven great
named cats you gassed in the move. I couldn’ t keep them.
You explained so I understood. And what cat never loved
your shell-like ways, the claw of your steady fingers, firme
from the rasping of banjos and steady as it goes
best thought, you had taught
me — a river runs through it,
the foot of the soul standing
stubbornly in the freeze, all
the shards of ice crumpling up
the banks, what survives
in the ignorance. Play it away.
Be ceremony. Be a lit candle
to what blows you. Outside,
the sun gives a favorite present,
mountain nests in ironic meadows,
otter takes off her shoes, the small
hands of her feet reaching, reaching; still,
far away people are dying. Crisp
one dollar bills fold another life.
