Coyotes And Tennessee Williams
New Mexico is hot and beautiful,
out of control, all reds and oranges,
hot to the touch, even the clouds
burn at sunset.
People sizzle on the griddle of the desert,
cooled for eating by blue sky,
cooled for eating each other.
A windy gust is a ghost,
playing itself like a flute
through interstices of roofs of oxidized tin
and walls slowly sloughing adobe.
Dogs and the dead and family
tangle in a ball, no decent separation,
and I have a memory of
Suddenly Last Summer, where a young poet
is eaten by a pack of men
on a hot Italian hilltop.
New Mexico can’t contain itself,
it can create Madonnas and black hells,
the boundless mind.
I’ll Be Seeing You: On Visiting My Demented Mother
On one of your good days
being with you is like
a visit from the dead.
It reminds me of dreams with Dad,
we’ve talked, then I wake up
to a few hours of emotional residue.
He’s back, that’s what it feels like,
but soon it dims, the feeling,
the way you slowly forget
a movie that moved you.
And that’s kind of how I remember
a good day with you. I guess
that makes sense because you’re
already dead in a way.
But you’re not really dead,
and that’s what breaks my heart because
you’re somewhere in between
dead and alive.
A Timeless Stab
Broken Baroque Catholic heart,
meaty pulpy, stringy with veins,
sundered and weeping
dewdrop blood.
I am hurt.
Ageless wounding by you,
the red of my cleft heart,
stippling shades of drying blood,
in obscene contrast
against white raiment.
Pasty mix in the dirt,
a heart’s liquid loss,
drippy drainage quickly sticky,
a muddy sorrow cake,
or winey porridge
cut by salty water,
a meal for Frida Kahlo and me.
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