So Sigh, City

City Scrapes
The hazy life of hills
behind veils of streets.
Conoco signs, IHOP billboards
that the sky wears along her neck—
where the horizon used to live.

The wind whimpers of fences and footprints—
Memory’s unremembered lines.

But there! At a distance—
A lonely curve that reminds me of tears.


Hush Streets
Hush, Streets.
Run over my heart.

The afternoon sun husks
the morning’s footsteps.

No trace of passerby
Save dirtier cement.

Winter rattles stubborn leaves—
Autumn’s orange sighs—
Still bound to their boughs.

The wind collects
Hours, days, weeks, months, years past
Along the gutter.

People pass.

Hush, Streets. Hush.


Made in China
Sticky fingerprint, I
pick and pull and peel
and rip and rub you
like dead skin

But you reappear
again and again
like hands
like hands held out
like hands pressed
like hands clasped
like hands hungry
like hand, like hands

Like the ones I hold you with
before I throw you out


“A River of Tears Runs Dry”: The Colorado River
For Inocencia, one of two-hundred remaining Cucupa Indians of Mexico

In tears what you
have lost:
sim-plea, water.

And yet your
salt survives
on this mud

flat delta from wet
land to
waste land

Inocencia,
are you gone?

Have you left
giant shrimp the size
of your father’s feet

pre-served to my
American meal of
irri-gated power

and flushing toilets?

Where I dispose
of the $2 neck-
laces bought from

you in front
of your museum

Bead
by Bloody
Bead

Down the Western Hemisphere
Down your forehead
Dry.

It is in my
mouth, Inocencia
You cannot

live on spit.


Your Other Shoulder
I see her stooping
With my mother’s hands
To scratch the dust

Her eyes blink—
My mother’s brown—
But do not recognize me

Like I her wrinkles
Like I her skin
Like I her fingers

Pointing? Pleading?
Ay, Mami! Speak to me.
Why does your shoulder fall that way?

Yet still, I think, if I speak to you,
You will smile, shake your head at Sadness, say
Mi’ja, Mi’ja. Abrázame!

And give me your other shoulder
When I should give you both of mine
And bear you up.


Walking On
From behind—what do I look like?

Does the line of my neck reel you closer?
A loose strand of hair reveals where I met the ocean.

Do my swinging arms cast nets about you?
A mark on me—yes! I almost drowned.

What do you desire?

A kind word
A washing of feet

Should I turn around
And come to you?

I would.


Drop
The streets are crying a blackened wet.

They hardly absorb this cleansing bath—
like dirt does.

I guess we just want clean cement.

But the streets are crying.

Gutters swallow this precious liquid
—satisfy the streets with tar.

Car wheels over wetness will never sound like rivers,
but we like the sound of rain on the roof.

We find beauty.

Even oil, in water, makes a rainbow.