stability

"yes doctor, things have been alright"
i take my pill each night
and my lover and i don't fight;
the internet tells me i've been taken
fooled and fucked by the man
but the man who's fucking me
loves me back, which is
worth more than the sort of
deep cynicism that puts ladies
at the fiddlehead co-op
in the crisp and crackly town of
new london, connecticut
telling my post-op cancer survivor mom
"just eat right and the tumors will go away"
now i love kale but i've been saved by chemo.
of all of the things to hate, why hate relief?
if you had a constant migraine
constantly grinding at your teeth
you'd pop that pill
but the "psycho" prefix has got you so worked up
you can't tell poetry from prose
simple love from padded walls;
i'm not going to fight with you on this one
the kind of love i live is all-one-all-forgive
like doctor bronner's soap
like the slippery syllable,
"hope"

under all of that

in the under-time,
the slippery silence,
you caress me.
i am daunted by your beauty
which, like mine, will go
maybe tomorrow, maybe
today.

what will we have when
our lips go soft and
unresponsive? what
memories, what romance?
i will remember the time
soft shutter clicks marked
our mutual fascination
and little hikes
pulled us close to the trees.

this is the under-time
alive but submerged.
i am learning how to swim
and also about surface tension.

saturnine

this is the fourth year
cold sucks chlorophyl from our trees
red faces, yellow leaves
falling brown gusts that roll us up
in snow; we put on our coats
ready for the long haul.

your mouth is a beauty-dream
ethereal, responsive, sometimes mean
an echo chamber for all of the sacrificial things

winter is when the ground has mouths
inhaling all of the moisture to its gob
swallowing expansive, frozen gusts
that we might purify and sip
from our parlours on our fireside dates;
the snow is just
tea waiting to happen.

your eyes are disbelief.
i look at you and think of me.

roblar

las noches sin duerme están agarrándome

sacudiéndome con la esfuerza de mis sinapsis

o de raízes, o del viento de las montañas.

sin dormir, me cuesta abrir la boca para

dejar, "amor," en tus labios

me cuesta pensar en tus viajes

a tierras rojas y remotas

a personas amables y abiertas

lejos, lejos, lejos de mí.

a la una, con párpados pesados

dejo saber las sonrisas de días anteriores

y el paisaje se convierte en plano, plano, plano

y estás lejos, estoy lejos, próxima noche me parece lejos, lejos, lejos

austin, hueston

got storytelling in your blood, man,
ink flowing down your veins
me, i'm a jack of all trades staring
up your ace and
wondering if it's going to be okay?

because you, you've got canyons
and that smile, the one with the eye-wrinkles.
more than poetry, more than sighs
you've got bold-ass colors
and firmly painted lines
you could take austin from me with a word
and i would watch, and not be surprised

you are the first, the last, the master of my jealousy
and the mister of my man
i am sad when i see the eye-wrinkles,
thinking of how quickly he would go if you gave him
the sentence
if you just let him know.

i don't tell stories these days
so much as chew on words
thinking of distant austin, of hueston
and of birds.

ventarrón

the nahuatl fire gods

are kittens and cats named after
rice and beans which are in turn
named after roosters, roosters, roosters
which call one to rise at ungodly times

after a couple of peaks
it becomes clear how wind and rocks
might sweep one towards the volcanoes
regardless of danger or desire
the fire gods call
and the cats yowl
and the roosters crow

and they all need food to live

bienestar, or: the true skill

1.

she had come out of the womb ready
is what she told the lady in the pantsuit
with the red lipstick
and the inviting smile
out of the womb and into the office, she said
meaning the words all the way out of her mouth
right into the petite little ears
of the lady in the pantsuit
with the red lipstick
and the inviting smile

who picked up her pen and wrote something
and didn't stop with the inviting smile
which made the smile look less inviting

2.

"three weeks is when you stop hoping," said her father
who had a big beard and lots of job experience
three weeks, he said, is when you know
it's time to start again

"where is mother?" she asked herself
but mother was still dead
(these things don't change)
and besides, she was only recalling what she had said
to the lady in the pantsuit about wombs.
she had come out of the womb ready
but was beginning to be less and less sure what for.

she did not apply to another job, but she did by a set of paints
to pass the time.

3.

ten weeks is when a man with a large mouth
and rosy cheeks
and a pantsuit (which everyone just called
a "suit") asked her, "how much is that one going for?"
and she told him two hundred bucks
and he wrote check right on the spot
but she missed the painting once it was gone

when the man came back she had another painting
and then a woman came by, and then another
by the twenty-third week she stopped counting

she always kept one for herself:
a gray little office with perfect corners
and a reflection in the window
of a lady in a pantsuit
with red lipstick
and an inviting smile

4.

when the lady in the pantsuit
with red lipstick
and an inviting smile

finally called her after seventy-four weeks to say
"we have your records on file and would like to
offer you a job"

the lady in the floral dress
with sunburnt arms
and paint on her fingers
giggled a lot and stuck her hand right into a paintbucket
and said, "no thank you, i'm talking to mother now."