Balloons and Boulders

What is crime, I ask.

What is punishable if unavoidable, you go.

Say the man is twenty-nine

or twenty-five, but looks moth-eaten,

cheeks as sawtoothed as cliffs.

Say he is six foot two.

Say he is car-less and comfortless

(and that explains his females, 

the appetites).

Say his arms have gone black,

intricate twists and helixes where 

needles have pricked and poked him.

Say his eyes are starved.

Say his eyes are illiterate,  his lungs rash.

From a window, I watch.

From a window, I count.

Seven cars in one afternoon.

A stream of them:  coming!  coming!

There are loud women who knock handsomely,

and men, groomed, silent as spiders, 

weaving caliche into stunning lace, 

their urges clutched to navels as another 

would wield cash.  This is the envelope of unloading: 

Allotments and the burden of a balloon 

as hulking as boulders.

Asphalt

I’m seven.   

Barefoot, my mother runs after Raul’s Ford.

Don’t leave me, babe!  

Don’t leave me!

At 33, she calls.  

Frantic.  Dying sounds

conveyed via cellphone.

She ran over my cat.

In the street, the cat is convulsing.

If I’m crying, perhaps he won’t

yell at me, she thinks.

I’m sure of it.

It’s worked with other men.

At 33, I leave my dinner

and lock myself in a room.

I’m twenty-one.  

Puke stains the tops of my feet.

I didn’t quite make it to the sink.

Don’t die on me, mijo.

Why are you gonna die on me!?

Haphazardly, I wipe the yellow

mush, enough of it, not to track

it to the bath.

At 3 a.m., I’ve parked crookedly.  

In the street, I am barefoot.

Enough tequila in me to set

her voice ablaze.

I’m five.

My father fights with my mother and 

leaves with my uncle.

Move, move! she insists.

I’m pushed aside.   Having

just waved goodbye to them, my hand

goes through the rip in the grey screen.

Why don’t you just fuck him, too!

She yells, and the neighbors duck their

heads out trailer doors and 

manufactured screenless windows.

His truck speeds off, and she’s left

huffing the dust.

Such heaps of asphalt to rub away.

Sweeping after Having Remembered Mi Abuela 

i.

At the sink, the talavera

has clanked, broken water, and

chipped so that I must hide it, while 

noiselessly, you sit,

paint splat across an elbow, the

10 o’clock news rattling on and on

about armed robbery and wrecks-- 

the pit bull curled like a

rattlesnake at your boot.  

ii.

There was a time when

we were in Mexico, and I’d packed

our plates and the bowls I 

promised to purchase each trip we

made;  when we moved to

this house I never wanted,

these plates stayed put away,

same newsprint wrapping, 

same cardboard box, 

same thing that happened, 

I sometimes fear, 

to the knuckles we once called my heart.

iii.

In the bed, you sleep.  The dogs

snore and sigh.  A pillow

covering your face from the 

whisk of the broom I run over the

hickory floors you laid last winter.  

Te vas a casar con una viuda.  

You will marry a widow, I recall my Indian

abuela stutter as she pushed

a bundle of yellow straw 

over my unprotected feet 

when she would come to the States

to visit us and get money

for those of us who stayed behind.

Ironically, it is you who married

the widower.

Chorizo and Clouds

This morning’s chorizo blackens, 

and these eyelids haven’t even slid open

enough to admonish the date--

In the shower, the milk has soured.

The soap hardens in the cold.

December isn’t too far off.

Fantastically, the steam lifts me 

to a world of clouds, 

wisps and tatters and heavenly shit, 

and I climax enthusiastically with images 

of you and a younger version of me 

trekking among these clouds, 

away from these splintery walls 

with holes pushed through, 

this hole in the unfinished floor that once 

nearly swallowed me and two dogs whole.  

At your seat, I’ve arranged a plate.  

Orange, now, from the egg.

The corn already has mixed itself in

crisply.  A long time ago, you would have

kissed me and smiled that half-curl of the mouth

you’re known for, then, 

put your hands up underneath the peel 

of my shirt to feel my heart 

before you ate.  I would have breathed 

confessional paragraphs into your neck.  

Yes, that was a long-ass  time ago, 

you’d likely say.  

Birds and Buicks

and there’s this road,

birds on it

blocking bikes and buicks

birds gouging pits

in asphalt, pits like sockets

like craters

like searching worms out

of rock;  and there’s

this homeboy

I used to go to

when my own sick birds

dig into those

things I’ve offered 

other vatos only to 

have them dismissed;

things like a ride

from county one 

night after a warrant got

served after a fight

after throwing my

ass outta my own house

onto concrete and steps

and that terrible scratch

etched into the back

where I slid into a nail

that burst right outta the floor;

there’s this road

where a cruise 

is the next best thing for

a vato with too much alone

time, too much attachment

to what was his in the past;

this road where a bird preys

upon a dead thing left between

F150s, sun, and traffic cones.

Back When I Was a Chavalon, Fair Ave.

Georgia

for J.

And in the afternoon, the hardness 

ascends from thighs.  And this is a time 

for telling what’s here amongst us four.

Within the growing and these ventricles that 

Surrender their girths to throats and tendencies--

I hold his cap to my mouth,

And my chin winces. 

Eyes wish this would last—this 

Don’t go.  Don’t go.  Repeating itself

Beneath the root of the tongue 

as if the syllables

Alone could manufacture time.

This is it, then:  the bone’s prayer.

Lungs, lungs.  

My face has his scent.  

Into a Fold 

Of dick skin, I pressed a murmur and 

imagined a big pearl.

Alive and warm in my hand

And then into the passage of throat. 

Gloating, it swam.

A December passed over me like jetsam and rockets.  

Armada of nimbus and space ships, 

they came and lifted my big pearl.

Pearl of all the ocean.

Pearl of the Gulf and the Nueces and 

the arroyo just east of the Courts where I come

to remember things.  

His ear wasn’t there but he could hear me.

From my toes that grabbed at planks of flooring--

vibrations, an echo, a shoe marooned at the 

far end of the room.  

Sitting on his belly, I rock.  

I, too, can give pearls,

Which I do:  a messy string of them encased in 

Chest hair and cachete.  

I pant.  I squat.  I feign I would 

Not miss the man or my pearl.

A melody.  I dug for one that I could hum or 

tap or suck on and that would occupy me 

For the night.  Toothless giggle.  

Stare at the tangle of pearls in my palm.  

Smug ruthless crinkle of it:  

inhabitable, drying.  

Ovals

i.

We creep up softly to the monte obscured by

Flores Street and freeways.

Urban comets whiz above.  Taillights 

and the spectacle of a Tower watching out 

for us.  

ii.

I could change shit for you.

Stay.  Dig the meaty parts of your calves 

Into my shoulder blades.  Sigh.  

Press your feet into my throat.  I could make

Ovals in the sod.  Endlessly.  Irrevocable

impressions, tattoos and toes.

iii.

I could make it so that you’re the only one.

Could conjure an arroyo to make mud that

will mask our tire troughs and raise the

earth-scent.  The 10 has torn hapless gaps 

into this photograph: 

atop my bike, this colchón and my

Southside longing.

Saliva to Thread, Sternum, and Scalp

an escapulario has snapped;

kneeling, fingers fumble, 

nimbly wishing to

fuse the broken thread

whole

traffic lights do not wait;

midday, a sedulous task:  

a tallboy and lotto;

PikNik doors swing shut and 

open in unwitting applause; 

shuffling feet miss

him.

I could offer the young vato

what I have around my

neck;  

he will soon find saliva

will not fuse

a broken escapulario.

I could offer homeboy

a hand, the repose of a 

vato’s shoulder,

or

words of advisement 

(trucha, homito.   looking at me

like that, you already know

the bulk of what there is to know).

I could offer

my scalp, stubble, salt, and 

pressed to

the slick section of his neck 

where he will dream

of others after me 

(the permanence of ink si vale),

could offer

the sternum, where he

has never felt a vato’s lips form

crisp ovals, has never felt

that crushing weight of a vato’s 

goatee inching up your spine that

first time, where 

the prick of his name enjoining

the wall of your cora is a

new thing;

could show him my own

shit, those losses and aguantos

where another’s

letters dangle atop cora flesh

and rib;

(be down.  know how to not fuck a good thing up, 

yet, know when to say fuck it and leave

that shit behind)

and then,

my own saliva 

might accept 

his own scraped scalp;  

Clown, I will learn they call him.

he will tell me it all,

and intently, I will listen; 

(can’t ever say nobody ever gave you a chance)

glistening brown, scarred, 

his scalp touching

my thigh or the flat of my belly,

a twist of the mouth 

sets that space inside him

where the

thread has broken 

ablaze 

what’s your pit’s name? he says.

Cucuy, I say.  

parking lot has emptied, a place

as vacant as my bed.

works best if you just put it on,

make a knot.

(some things, pa, can never be fixed)

I spit.  crack my neck, go slow.