Papaya Poem Half-Composed at the Poteet Swap Meet One Afternoon While a Silver Virgencita Gleams Lovingly along My Babe’s Formidable Chest
for JS


With this papaya, I
Cultivate hours that are soon an amalgamation
Of years; this span of prickly stillness, that nimble blur,
Which is already bone and tongue; and
My heart has stirred and parted,
That lucid, timid part that no one sees, no one privy,
But you—

You have the eyes for such a sight;
Precise, that vast intensity you carry
Like breath in the pocket of the lung of the eye,
Simón—esos ojitos; and for this, I promise laughter
in the portraiture of our truck,
Uninhibited laughter, colossal as air;
Promise, herein, to hold your thick
Familiarity in the cavernous expanse that is
My belly, the quinto chambers of the nopal
I’ve assembled into a corazón;

Tonight, the rabbit of the moon on my thighs, where
Your lips dance as Catrinas and Cortezes
Pirouette; a crescendo of
A painter’s suspiro;
All these seeds of papayas, all these seeds of promesas
Cascade over throat muscle and the hard
Arroyo of the vein that runs the terrain
Of all I have to give and have had taken in life and
Am offering to you, guey;
Remember when you said,

Damn, chulo, with those lips and those eyes,
I could spend some serious time…

I-37
for my Hyperion


i. Eyelids
Ajar. Tar. Tar seethes
Into asphalt wounds. Wonderland never
Appeared so thawed. Rueful equilibrium!
Appease me, now, hours. For soon, I’ll soak these
Tattered toes in gentle buckets of
Milk so white, the fur of doves will emerge
Goat-like and inveterately doomed.


ii. Faith
And the clouds have all curdled. Testaments:
Traffic gnarls. Exposes jagged rows of
Metal. Casualties so contorted and
Impatient—entire jowls serrate, separate.


iii. Downtown San Anto
To the beat of aluminum alloy beasts,
Jaundiced eye sockets twitter. Attachments.
Allowances. Barbados and pajaritos!
Anxieties toss cakes of silence beneath tire treads;
My ardor for you is explicit.
Ay, monarca wings and 5 am unrequited clutching!


iv. Accordions
Resolve enigmas among these odd clots of clouds.
I-37, I favor pechos festooned with blooms
of xoloizcuintlis, Spook Light cicatrizes.
In las palmas, I ascend to summer and reconcile
the stars. Incurably, I carry away the sun.