down the center like a cleft lip.
You come from the world
with a river running through it.
The dead. The living.
The river Styx.
You come from the twin Laredos.
Where the world was twice-named and
nopalitos flower like a ripe ranchera.
Ay, corazón, ¿tú que sabes de amor?
No wonder your heart is filled
with mil peso notes and jacaranda.
No wonder the clouds laugh each
time they cross without papers.
I know who you are.
You come from that country
where the bitter is more bitter
and the sweet, sweeter.
Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity
If
you came back
I’d treat you
like a lost Matisse
couch you like a Pasha
dance a Sevillana
leap and backflip like a Taiwanese diva
bang cymbals like a Chinese opera
roar like a Fellini soundtrack
and laugh like the little dog that
watched the cow jump over the moon
I’d be your clown
I’d tell you funny stories and
paint clouds on the walls of my house
dress the bed in its best linen
And while you slept
I’d hold my breath and watch
you move like a sunflower
How beautiful you are
like the color inside an ear
like a conch shell
like a Modigliani nude
I’ll cut a bit of your hair this time
so that you’ll never leave me
Ah, the softest hair
Ah, the softest
If
you came back
I’d give you parrot tulips and papayas
laugh at your stories
Or I wouldn’t say a word which,
as you know, is hard for me
I know when you grew tired
off you’d go to Patagonia
Cairo Istanbul
Katmandu
Laredo
Meanwhile
I’ll have savored you like an oyster
memorized you
held you under my tongue
learned you by heart
So that when you leave
I’ll write poems
Fan of a Floating Woman
after Shikibu
Your morning
glories are beautiful
to look at in this photograph.
Beautiful is how I remember them.
And I think a man who grows morning glories
because he loves their beautifulness, must be a beautiful man.
Here. I want to make a gift of this fan. Write my name on it for you
to place in this man’s house of yours. Perhaps to stake I’ve been here.
Only a fan. Not a glass shoe. Not a pomegranate seed. Not a coffee
cup or key. You’ll smooth the sheets. Punch the bruised pillows
when I’m gone. It will be as it was before. Mundo sin fin.
The silences again tugged taut as linen.
Perhaps another will pluck this fan with
its clatter of courtrooms and pianos.
Wonder who I am.
That Beautiful Boy Who Lives Across from the Handy Andy
invited me
to his birthday
party. Twenty-
eight this Saturday,
December 2nd, 1989.
So Saturday
night I am going
to put on my prettiest
dress, the black one
with the green
and purple sequins,
and my cowboy boots.
And I am going
to be there
with a six-pack
and this poem,
like any fool who loves
to look at a cloud,
or evening poppy,
or a red red pickup truck.
for John Hernández in memoriam
Black Lace Bra Kind of Woman
for la Terry
¡Wáchale! She’s a black lace bra
kind of woman, the kind who serves
up suicide with every kamikaze
poured in the neon blue of evening.
A tease and a twirl. I’ve seen that
two-step girl in action. I’ve gambled bad
odds and sat shotgun when she rambled
her ’59 Pontiac between the blurred
lines dividing sense from senselessness.
Ruin your clothes, she will.
Get you home way after hours.
Drive her ’59 seventy-five on 35
like there is no tomorrow.
Woman zydeco-ing into her own decade.
Thirty years pleated behind her like
the wail of a San Antonio accordion.
And now the good times are coming. Girl,
I tell you, the good times are here.
Down There
At that moment, Little Flower scratched herself
where one never scratches oneself.
from “The Smallest Woman in the World”
—Clarice Lispector
Your poem thinks it’s bad.
Because it farts in the bath.
Cracks its knuckles in class.
Grabs its balls in public
and adjusts—one,
then the other—
back and forth like Slinky. No,
more like the motion
of a lava lamp.
You follow me?
Your poem thinks it
cool to pee in the pool.
Waits for the moment
someone’s watching before
it sticks a finger up
its nose and licks
it. Your poem’s weird.
The kind that swaggers in like Wayne
or struts its stuff like Rambo.
The kind that learned
to spit at 13 and still
is doing it.
It blames its bad habits
on the Catholic school.
Picked up words that
snapped like bra straps.
Learned words that ignite
of their own gas
like a butt hole flower.
Fell in love with words
that thudded like stones and sticks.
Or stung like fists.
Or stank like shit
gorillas throw at zoos.
Your poem never washes
its hands after using the can.
Stands around rolling
toilet paper into wet balls
it can toss up to the ceiling
just to watch them stick.
Yuk yuk.
Your poem is a used rubber
sticky on the floor
the next morning,
the black elephant
skin of the testicles,
hairy as kiwi fruit
and silly,
the shaving
stubble against the purity
of porcelain,
one black pubic
hair on the sexy
lip of toilet seat,
the swirl of spit
with a cream of celery
center,
a cigarette
stub sent hissing
to the piss pot,
half-finished
bottles of beer reeking
their yeast incense,
the miscellany of maleness:
nail clippers and keys,
tobacco and ashes,
pennies quarters nickels dimes and
dollars folded into complicated origami,
stub of ticket and pencil and cigarette, and
the crumb of the pockets
all scattered on the Irish
linen of the b
edside table.
Oh my little booger,
it’s true.
Because someone once
said Don’t
do that!
you like to do it.
Baby, I’d like to mention
the Tampax you pulled with your teeth
once in a Playboy poem*
and found it, darling, not so bloody.
Not so bloody at all, in fact.
Hardly blood cousin
except for an unfortunate
association of color
that makes you want to swoon.
Yes,
I want to talk at length about Menstruation.
Or my period.
Or the rag as you so lovingly put it.
All right then.
I’d like to mention my rag time.
Gelatinous. Steamy
and lovely to the light to look at
like a good glass of burgundy. Suddenly
I’m artist each month.
The star inside this like a ruby.
Fascinating bits of sticky
I-don’t-know-what-stuff.
The afterbirth without the birth.
The gobs of a strawberry jam.
Membrane stretchy like
saliva in your hand.
It’s important you feel its slickness,
understand the texture isn’t bloody at all.
That you don’t gush
between the legs. Rather,
it unravels itself like string
from some deep deep center—
like a Russian subatomic submarine,
or better, like a mad Karlov cackling
behind beakers and blooping spirals.
Still with me?
Oh I know, darling,
I’m indulging, but indulge
me if you please.
I find the subject charming.
In fact,
I’d like to dab my fingers
in my inkwell
and write a poem across the wall.
“A Poem of Womanhood”
Now wouldn’t that be something?
Words writ in blood. But no,
not blood at all, I told you.
If blood is thicker than water, then
menstruation is thicker than brother-hood.
And the way
it metamorphosizes! Dazzles.
Changing daily
like starlight.
From the first
transparent drop of light
to the fifth day chocolate paste.
I haven’t mentioned smell. Think
Persian rug.
But thicker. Think
cello.
But richer.
A sweet exotic snuff
from an ancient prehistoric center.
Dark, distinct,
and excellently
female.
*John Updike’s “Cunts” in Playboy (January 1984), 163.
Los Desnudos: A Triptych
I
In this portrait of The Naked Maja by Goya
I’ll replace that naughty duquesa
with a you. And you
will do nicely too, my maharaja.
The gitano curls and the skin a tone
darker than usual because
you’ve just returned from Campeche.
All the same, it’s you raised
with your arms behind your head
staring coyly at me from the motel pillows.
Instead of the erotic breasts,
we’ll have the male eggs to look at
and the pretty sex.
In detail will I labor the down
from belly to the fury of
pubis dark and sweet,
luxury of man-thigh
and coyness of my maja’s eyes.
My velvet and ruffled eye will linger,
precise as brushstrokes,
take pleasure in the looking and look long.
This is how I would paint you.
In the leisure of your lounging.
Both nude and naked to my pleasure.
Let me look with greedy
eye and greedy appetite, my
petty mischief. Let me wonder
at your wordlessness. What
are you thinking when you look like that?
We do not belong one to the other
except now and again intermittently.
Of that infinity, freely
you give yourself to me to take
and I take freely.
II
This time my subject is
a man with the eyes
of a nagual or a Zapata.
But you can’t see his eyes.
What you get a good view of is his famous backside.
He is painted à la Diego holding calla lilies
in the rich siennas and olives of a native.
He is the one with the sleepy gaze.
My favorite child and centerpiece.
I divulge this information because as favorite
I would like to take my time. But,
he belongs to another, and I own him
borrowed.
When Frida finds out she’ll freak, all hell will break,
the telephone won’t stop fregando.
How could a sister? How?
I’m not sister nor is love now
nor ever will be
politically correct.
I know an artist does what she must do,
and art is a jealous spouse.
You share me with my husband,
and I share you as well
with that otra you call wife.
My life, I don’t mind.
You are a lovely calla.
I do not look to lure you from your life.
Don’t think to pluck me to fidelity.
I love you. You love me.
We need this passion.
Agreed.
III
Like a Mexican Venus at his toilet,
I put you here with your back to me
and your flat Indian ass. Ay, beauty!
The little angel holding up the mirror
is me, of course, and me
refracted from this poem.
I love you languid like this, a vain
man, and leisurely I love the slim
limbs and slim bones. You’re very
pretty primped and pretty proud as
any man is wont to be. You’re eternally
mine to look at and paint as I see fit.
I can’t quit
you though
time and time again
you quit me.
I can’t quit the looking
though you and I are past
the time of epic wars. Wars
and love and love and wars
have disunited and united us.
All the same, I look back and looking back
I am reflected in that mirror,
you with your back to me,
me facing backwards. Little
one, I love
you. I can’t forget you.
You can’t forget me.
I won’t let you.
Mexicans in France
He says he likes Mexico.
Especially all that history.
That’s what I understand
although my French
is not that good.
And wants to talk
about U.S. racism.
It’s not often he meets
Mexicans in the south of France.
He remembers
a Mexican Marlon Brando once
on French tv.
How, in westerns,
the Mexicans are always
the bad guys. And—
Is it true
all Mexicans
carry knives?
I laugh.
—Lucky for you
I’m not carrying my knife
today.
He laughs too.
—I think
the knife you carry
is
abstract.
My Nemesis Arrives After a Long Hiatus
I
I paint my toes matador red.
Snap freshly dried sheets.
Pull taut. Tuck corners.
Wax floors. Rub mirrors.
Oil my body and sleep
under the midnoon eye.
While the thwack, thwack, thwack
of the carpenter’s hammer
next door stops long enough
to watch me slip
into the pool. A man’s hollow
laugh getting a load of my Indian ass.
I wash towels. Scent linen.
Stock fridge with things to eat.
Slice pineapple, melon, strawberries.
Inspect my body where the tan
line stops abrupt as a stand-up comic. Silly belly soft as
the yolk of an egg.
I wash with soap made from Italian
honey. Wrap a clean towel
around my hair.
Perfume skin. Paint
lips into a perfect
bull’s-eye.
Admire clouds,
how they travel with
the grace of snails.
When sun leaves, you’ll come.
II
Crumpled pillow. Coffee cup.
Flaccid rubbers on the bedside table.
Chair askew. Breakfast jam on the carpet.
Cigarette crushed into a saucer.
From the road, your car—
that burgundy dollop
color of my menstruation—
leaving and leaving and leaving me.
III
My goddess Guadalupe is
more powerful than your god Marx.
Volviste—¿no?
Volverás.
IV
I light my bedroom with faroles and papel picado.
Paper lanterns, paper flags bought at the wooden
stands in front of the San Miguel Church
at Christmas. Tissue flags
from one beam to the next. Sleep