blood at home
blood (is) between beats
(blood) is ((first))
blood (is) working
(blood) is ((hard to push))
blood (is) inside
(blood) is ((ahead of time))
blood (is) between beats
(blood) is ((first))
blood (is) working
(blood) is ((hard to push))
blood (is) inside
(blood) is ((ahead of time))
Tie your tongue, cross your legs
Close your eyes in the camera’s flash
so that your card stay tucked
tightly like silver spoons in the cupboard
Nestle them nicely, you won’t know
to love them until it’s too late
This shame you hold in hallowed hands
like a wicker to flame unto flowers forged
will become something, somewhere
You will become something, somewhere, sometime
Even the floats we ride—
turquoise, white, sunny calm.
But hidden among un-
blossomed perennials
are frogs that bleat like sheep—
small frogs—
over-the-hill sheep.
Weekends, we would drive the dirt roads south of Tucson,
those old washed-out tracks drug dealers
and human coyotes would use to smuggle their products across the border,
down near Arivaca where it’s said people go to disappear,
picking wild sage from the hillsides for you to bring home
and dry and bundle into smudge sticks
for your empowerment ceremonies,
burning the sage while you chanted the mantra
that would unravel the bond tying us one to the other.
I often wonder if you’re happier now —
I hope so, for the pain of that unweaving to have been worthwhile —
and about the strong magic you must have mastered
that keeps me, after all these years, smoldering for you.
Today Savannah’s squares
are drizzled gray. On Drayton Street,
a man in house shoes and a raincoat
shuffles toward the curb, waits for his dog
to pee, and tells me
in his thick Spanish accent,
A good place to go is the Catholic church.
When I say that’s where we’re headed,
he nods his approval.
Take your time. Thirty,
forty minutes. You will love it.
I thank him and wonder, briefly,
as I dodge a puddle,
whether we look lost or if he is
simply guiding us to reprieve
from the rain. Maybe he fancies himself
some sort of evangelist to tourists —
slightly disheveled, unassuming,
pointing us, in his way, toward God.
to a 4-year-old sand singing
in a box little bucket
& tiny shovel someone to play
with past supper sandbox morphs
to vast sahara rapture multiplies
desert of knives fingers
bleed skin seared
by sunlight hearts forget
sweet rough sandbox
becomes memory child’s tiny heart
seared & hemorrhaging burgundy
waterfalls of blood war the end
of advanced civilzation snail
paced migration rapture petitions
again, again rapture’s invitation
to a 4-year-old sand
singing again, again
