Poetry

I’m told the wind is the keeper of memories
But I don’t even think it knows
When I started bleeding

A young man stands on the shore
Where clockwork waves
Only move with the death of butterflies

Sand swims over his feet
He grabs a handful of the
Loose ground and lets it

Slip into the water
He’s a February child, like me
I can tell from his voice

It falls like heart-shaped snow
I pick up the sand
It brings me back to Cub Scouts

“Don’t worry. We’ll catch you”
I lean back like a baby eagle learning to fly
Gravity does its only routine
Two boys back away from me
My body meets the tile floor

Sand slides out of my grasp
My fingers are frost, born of ice
The shore shows itself again

I don’t think it worked

I didn’t know I spent most of my youth telling half
Truths. I was born under your Floridian sun

Had my first crush witnessed by North Carolina’s Mountains
Held my first library card under the guidance of Tennessee snow

And yet, I’ve always told you I was Mexican
But wasn’t that the answer you wanted?

No. It was the answer you gave me.
But your answer never changed when you heard

You’re not a true Mexican until you can hold your spice
And speak Spanish. You knew I cried, biting jalapenos

And you knew I didn’t speak Spanish, but never smiled
When others said I had an American accent.

Still, you told me I couldn’t be white without an ‘h’ in my name
And I know my color can’t let you label me as passing, like my father

But there was a time when he wasn’t passing. A time when you let
A mother’s accent anoint him as half white and good enough to be a janitor.

And you taught his father the song We Don’t Speak Spanish Here
So how can I learn the lyrics of Latin language when you limit the chorus?

And I still love the textured taste of cut steak and mashed potatoes
You can still hear my hum of ordering hamburgers with fries

I’ve seen you loosen your lips about sun-kissed skin
I’ve heard you hold your tongue over untaught syllables

But you keep quiet when your claimed child peeks
Eyes wandering side to side to the clicking of clocks

Are you legal?

“Why isn’t he crying?”
I look up to the Angel her sleeves rolled back
Covered in my fluids
Thousands of drops coat her fingers
My blood the brightest, cakes her pale hands,
The hands holding my son

He’s not the glass doll in the nativity set
He’s limp
Silent
Silent night, holy night
She looks up with blue eyed horror
This is not the perfect scene

He was supposed to be loud, hungry and gorgeous
I look as she takes a single white nail and cuts the cord
One swipe we are no longer one
The boy I screamed to hold
He didn’t scream back
Silent night, holy night

She rushes away holding him
Like if she doesn’t cradle his neck and back He might fall in two
That’s when it started, my sobs
The need to stand up
I was bleeding, split in two
I tried to stand and cried like a dog hit by it’s owners truck

Shock and need to get away, away, away
Joseph wrapped me in his arms
To comfort me?
No, to keep me still
Pin the weeping cow as her calf
is ripped toward the meat drawer

Next to me in the dirty broken barn
The donkey’s ears twitch
Eyes wide as it lets out a quiet huff
I knew she was a Jill
In her eyes was a mother
who’s waited like me before
Silent night, holy night

The Angel shook
I could hear her teeth chatter
God didn’t prepare her for a dead savior
Her wings were tall
making a white feathery wall
Blocking me from my boy

I hate her
She delivered my son
She’s saving my son
She’s here to protect us and I hate her
If he doesn’t live
What am I?
A game

Nine months of pain
Morning sickness
Feet swollen into hooves
Tears fat and stupid
I was a dancing fool
The bells ringing above my head

I thought it confirmation he was with me
All it had been was a jester’s hat
Hot tears rolled down my cheeks
I pushed myself away from Joseph
who loved me through everything
My pretty saintly bullshit became his
I was an idiot

I hate god
Give me my son
I’m not asking I’m telling
Don’t let him be a painful transaction
Don’t let him die in a crash he didn’t cause
Don’t make me the foolish dancing monkey

I was fourteen dammit when you asked me
Of course I’d say yes
How dare you
How fucking dare you take my boy
My beautiful sweet, gorgeous, giving, dead, dead, dead-

A single long cry that made my aching core sew itself together
My tears felt like foreign objects on my skin
I didn’t know why they’d be there when’s he’s here
The Angel holds him like a precious thing
A holy thing
A gorgeous gorgeous thing

All mine to love and hold
She sets him in my arms
one hand on his neck the other on his back
I grin like a fool
He’s covered in the filth from my body
I lay a hand on his naked chest his heart beating

It’s gonna run dry one day
To bleed away all wrongs and make all rights
as gorgeous as him
But right now he’s making little squeaks
Tiny confused cries
And when he latches onto my chest I feel him feed

His crying stops
It’s a silent night, a holy night
That’s when I understand why the whole world sings

Last night he was talking to Federico Fellini
in the bar on chili night, who told him “I’m not afraid
anymore of telling the truth.” John Lennon was celebrating
his 84th birthday, as if the years no longer mattered.
He wanted his whiskey. Like Jim Harrison, I said,
who wasn’t actually dead like everyone else.
His poems scared all the birds from his head.
“Fear makes for good servants.”

His body spun on his stool and the Liverpool boy
talked about Lake Superior singing outside.
Angry waves exploded in his chords
on a Gibson he had left out all night in my car.
It had an ugly sound that suited his darker edge.
His wire-rims were replaced by designer shades now,
all his shirts made in Rome. He cursed when his tie
dove into a chili bowl and stained his Piero Gherardi suit.

When Fellini had told Lennon about his wife in bed
his eyes opened wide, ready for outer space.
John slept alone with the television on.
Some nights he asked me to join him. We read
Harrison’s poetry of birds and rivulets
flowing between a woman’s legs
in her walk through Mulligan Creek.

John Lennon suddenly splashed on some trousers
and explained he was going to knock on Fellini’s door.
The Beatle standing alone on the fourth floor
would catch my nineteen-year-old girl walking to the bathroom.
She would smile at him just when we happened to see
Jim Harrison with his manual typewriter
telling us he was going to write a novel on the hotel roof.
The ingredients were the stars, he told Lennon,
as if he wanted one more song from him
to sing of a woman’s body bathing in a stream.

A patchwork field of weeds
               and memories
mighty oaks resolute as maggots
               writhe
your voice & mine
                  echo in distortions
though puddles only reflect
my face

Thunder claps and dead
                 wood burns
                 lightning strikes and
                 rain sizzles
it’s monsoon season in tornado alley and
           I’m planting saplings with absinthe
                    & moon bearing witness

Seasons wax & wane but
                      I only age
my beauty growing
        in a straight
                     line
these trees have grown & they
        still sing your name

Slivers of trout break the lake
open, their swift disappearance
like the silence after a question.

It’s quiet. Blessedly so. Steaming
mist skims the water’s surface,
morning light oranges the poplars

and I am thinking about my son,
his breath and his skin’s warmth.
He’s small. Vulnerably so. Acorns

become oaks, fog melts to clarity,
this wide world wakes to sounds:
blue heron yelps, the rasp of grass-

hoppers, a clique of croaking crows,
the plop-plop-plop of smallmouth
bass leaping into the unnamed, and

my child on the porch, his joyous
shrieks of aliveness approaching
something nearing an answer.