 |
My mother said this part of Mexico is like desert. The trees huddle
at shore with thin skeleton arms, forever leaning, gasping.
Her sepia eyes stare back at me, knowing no secrets to her predawn.
The world burnt to a crisp; your hair only a spirit on your cabeza;
the river, a steady commerce of hatred. And someone’s Popsicle home
off in the background: made with tired hands, with windows that hang
like the old eyes of a net, over black earth firmament.
This land is unbroken somehow, like a preparation before meal,
before reconciliation, before soaking, before harvest, before gathering,
before being diced and keyed up, searing in a pan. And she in white cotton dress
and curtsy, offering her blue flowers to the world, with marionette hands
holding a spot light around her.
And on this part of Mexico, the river will defecate on itself,
revealing a small colony on the edge; an asylum for dank dolls dropped
into the currents; a prayer, made up of old rags and sacks, with steel pins
in eyes rusted. There are so many people to hate on this side of the river.
And their cactus bodies tell the tale, with porcupine feet to make him lame,
make her stay, make it right again.
A colony pillowed in-between the wet earth and then gathered
Into my mother’s young hands. From underneath, some kind of evil,
and uncontrollable writhing, a stone In the gravel of my mother’s heart.
One more trip to California, and you’re almost there.
Sometimes they buried money under the homes to keep safe
from the soldiers, and the ghosts never came.
Sometimes they told you not to lift the rocks, to beware of the stage under boulder,
a playground for bewitched snakes and scorpions.
Stay close to the home, and you did.
|
|
