The Faith
Vexed by the machine
the same faggot who lost
the game
landed in the chaparral
runs out raging — the injustice of the foul
meant everything has come to nothing
Sixteen years old and a Benedictine
he came to País M
in dark lounge suit soft collar and tie a bright cardigan
a freshly scraped tongue
Most wear their country with a kind of uneasiness
but he was a good actor
He needed to be
There’s no parade here Aquí no hay desfile
This tongue spliced in slivers the available anti-fatherland
drowses under epidermis
in arenaceous entrails
Lengua que evita la pelea Tongue that shirks battle
though the future
certainly impossible
to forget
to leave home
deny the influence of the father
embrace motherhood
brassieres
Tongue imagine a place you could travel to
just words of course
Tongue you are not mine just an inheritance
You are a blustering pester
Within two months you enact the fiercest persecution
Tongue you detain in half-built houses in darkness
squawk and cry
you are not free
They will catch up to you
of course
at last
This time make no mistake or else the biggest mistake of all
Somebody had thrown a bomb at automatic writing
at meaning-making por las avenidas tradicionales
but the bomb malfunctioned
and burst into clouds of fifth-grade vocabularies
or
My tongue desperately searches
but trips in the middle of the alleyway
Tongue you were photographed by the official photographer
praying for your enemies by the pitted wall
receiving the coup de grace
Tongue you inhabit the body you are el blanco
polysemic and erect
you emerge from a gaping, blistered mouth
a diseased unease
The picture of your killing
had an unforeseen effect
Me callo y me caigo
I bite my tongue and fall
into
***
Across the river
The border means more than a customs house, a passport officer,
a man with a gun. I won’t write about your excess, frontera, I’ll just copy it all down
and improvise. Mockingbird screams, potent confessions,
over you, everything is going to be different,
life is never going to be quite the same.
Either the pen lies or the juggler could never keep all the oranges in the air,
poised as you are before sin and sin.
Río, río, porque me miro I laugh, river, because I spy
en el espejo de tu cuerpo myself in the mirror of your body
y me doy rísa. and I give myself laughter.
On this side rabid crows dive-bomb mechanic shops
brown streaks cross crepescule fly low through canyons comida china tortillería
dusk-lit bodies and a man on the sidewalk sweats
First Baptist Church Cook-Off t-shirt bats pine for a bite radar leftovers
in the condom-littered stands garbage cans unquiet doves alight from rooftop
shadows are not sinister or exotic come to nothing everywhere
accordions squeal trumpets sound a dull back beats out the pain
or the tiniest pink skirted kid slips down from a dusty minivan’s gaping port
that grand archway entrance to the bridge,
she waves to the driver; Hello Kitty lunges forward into the angled rays of sunlight
brown and convex plains spread out on either side
and oil flares on the horizon all the gifts that crossing bestows,
those gifts will slip from hands
fall to the rain-soaked earth thud like oranges.