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Railroad Face

I sit with my railroad face and ask God to forgive me
for being a straight line toward the dead
who were buried with their poor clothes
in the Arizona desert of iron borders.

This way of waving to the embers of the past,
not apologzing for carrying torn rosaries inside
my pockets where beads of worry became fossilized
insects whose dry husks I kept since a child.

Rattlesnakes Hammered on the Wall

Seven of them pinned in blood by
long, shiny tails, three of them still

alive and writhing against the wood,
their heaviness whipping the wall

as they try to break free,
rattles beating in unison,

hisses slowly dying in silence,
the other four hanging stiff

like ropes to another life,
patterns of torn skin dripping

with power and loss, the wonder
of who might have done this

turning in shock as all seven
suddenly come alive when

I get closer, pink mouths
trembling with white fangs,

Epithalamion

At once this dragnet of cousins
Whips its way into your presence saying
None of them among us. They are
Oracles on the court of midnight,
The tight filigree of a mind or your
Splashing around in, your pandemonium
Of copper graffiti inexpertly put up.
They make weapons of furled hands.
“We will walk, but our bones will carry
Ribbons of lead, or we will, like
Acrobats mill-headed in 3s (3 blades,
3 hips, 3 tongues), answer to what comes
Before, what comes before?” Eleousa,
Master of Dark Eyelids, eye opening

definition of S dream code — Panamá sew — snake warmer

grown to give this gun
to you that sings
around another metal grip
inside the stall that goes
against the marker that has cuts
and calculates their known
deception, something ran
instead around the parked
encircles disks. wagon, tent
was all that heard, no mouths
were twice together found
or borrowed in the ceiling of
another torso promising this
twice together head, this push
through veins that gives your
death another word, another
his, another whipping rain
with any arm and any end

[sack for PICTS]

i make signs everywhere, with sticks, stones and leaves
for those in the clouds from below the line to arrive

i don’ t have a language to speak to you with, my tongues are all fish

i know that a one is a circle, and that nothing is round,
except every corner i saw by the hearts
lined up on the spine

i know that the winter will finally be here again, and that the summer
will die and be born with its ice

Itinerary

Vulnerable therein & perfectly
relinquished by statis,

object always of my
natal, crepuscular desire,

into the translucent specter,
body’ s blue fossil

of ice, never autochthonous,
still embarked upon

the imperative passage to get
there, to secure a geography

that will beg description,
narrative map, adopted

tentatively; if only to write
the ritual book of what was possible,

but never bound to occur.

Still Life

We’ d often
been included in

the weather, whose
changes (as in the

still, portending
darknesses of after

noon) were hardly
evident, if even

manifest at all.
The August rain

over Mixcoac
& the deadening

of all aspect
at a distance:

yet our sudden
wet bodies, firm

swelling divested
finally of shirts

& trousers, left
beside turbid

footprints on
the tiled floor;

this tongue, these
lips the lightning

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