Poetry

And then, one day, though my mother had sent me upstairs to prepare, my thumbs were no longer opposable, they would not hook into the waistband, they swung, limp—under my underpants was the Y of elastic, its metal teeth gripping the pad, I couldn’t be punished unless I was bare, but I couldn’t be bare…

All summer Papá holds a cigarette out the window of his laser-green Buick, points his lips left to blow the smoke into the mirage of exhaust between rush-hour cars. All summer he listens to La Cubanisima on AM radio exploding with accounts of how Castro took everything we had, how we’d get it back someday….

The sail had been drawn into an albino python hung vertically for the town to witness. The sea too shallow to dock. The boat     its chipped purple belly remained somewhat distant     solitary with only its static reflection. The fishermen swam to shore. Dark-brown sand     their patterned trails to the plaza for rest. One wore a…

June. A white heat. Two schoolgirls with crisp collars tread home on a red road.    Two young boys with crew                                                                                                          cuts yawn in the third tank, blink  from five hours sleep.    Blue dragonflies, girlsweat,    orange dust on Adidases… Green interior. Boysweat.        A twist of knobs and dials. Down the…

Like someone trying to nap in a room with a glaring terrarium God rolls over but before resuming his dream where He’s a lover decked out in a sunbeam, He glances at the blue planet he made, at continents crashing and mountains popping up, at sheets of dirt settling in streams and streams settling in…

As one opponent calling out checkmate an hour past midnight could crack a man already broken and bring allegations from his tongue, violence to his veins, bring him to rise and hip-knock the table so the legs screech, so the pieces quiver and topple, the bishop a salt shaker kissed by an elbow, bring him…

Learn to think like a horse her trainer said. She went into the pasture at noon, when her horses lay down to sleep without fear of coyotes, without fear. They sensed her but did not mind as she stretched out beside them with the June heat’s broad strong hand flattening her into the grass. Now,…

Outside the white cottage, a half-dozen chairs set out. A run of rocky fields washed by starlight. Full moon rising off the cliffs cutting a path to the islands. Inside the cottage, the sounds of children quieting themselves. The slow scrape and rattle of chairs dragged across a linoleum floor. Last stir of footsteps fading…

I watched the young couple walk into the tall grass and close the door of summer behind them, their heads floating on the golden tips, on waves that flock and break like starlings changing their minds in the middle of changing their minds, I saw their hips lay down inside those birds, inside the day…