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
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.
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
When I stop to consider my calling, remark
the places a wayward temper impelled me
I’ ve found in light of where I wandered lost
the most appalling evils could have befallen;
but when I disregard the journey it’ s hard to
even fathom I endured so much affliction;
what’ s more, my days being spent, I feel I’ ve
seen my wariness go with them. I’ ll come to
my end, for I surrendered artless to someone
with the science to dispel and destroy me if
so inclined, else the know-how to want to;
“All accounts of the past are made up of possibilities.”
— Dionisio Martinez
for Larry Villanueva
There is a music to this sadness.
In a room somewhere two people dance.
I do not mean to say desire is everything.
A cup half empty is simply half a cup.
How many times have we been there and not there?
I have seen waitresses slip a night's
worth of tips into the jukebox, their eyes
saying yes to nothing in particular.
Desire is not the point.
Tonight your name is a small thing
falling through sadness. We wake alone
in houses of sticks, of straw, of wind.
How long have we stood at the end of the pier
“I’ m glad you’ re positive.”
“I’ m glad you’ re positive,
too, though, of course, I wish
you weren’ t.” I wish you weren’ t
either is the response I expect,
and you say nothing.
And who can blame you?
Not me. I’ m not the one
who’ ll call you after dinner and a movie.
You’ re not the one who’ ll call me.
We both know we have
that — what? — that ultimate date
one night to come, one bright morning.
Who can blame us? Not the forks
and not the knives that carry on
and do the heavy lifting now.
The unrestricted sun
had split the day in two,
and now we went
on the edge of the afternoon
like a tableau of bent figures
made of faded blue duck.
We went like a wandering
and stinking, sweating brotherhood,
pull by pull between
the leafy cotton plants,
with the pathetic appearance of arriving
at the end of the furrow.
But we always arrived
in a rush to get there,
and the sole logic was
we had to move over
to the next furrow,
and no one could stop
Listen, you
who transformed your anguish
into healthy awareness,
put your voice
where your memory is.
You who swallowed
the afternoon dust,
defend everything you understand
with words.
You, if no one else,
will condemn with your tongue
the erosion each disappointment brings.
I swallow a pill but there is no cure
A city map won’ t get me where I want to go
Scaling the scaffold,
mindless of the mall,
unaware of driveways
where housewives dodge the wrecking ball,
I crawl outside these vacant blues
and into the contours of your eyes
