There is a silence that starts at the end of a beat inside you, stretching for miles; an infinite halt.

But you are not there to hear it, because you are not there at all. 

- eventually it will all have to go

I thought to myself, rounding the corner of a school where the ghost of children's laughter still lingered in fiveoclock hallways.

- i want to listen forever

I had gotten lost inside a very small forest, unfocused because I couldn't find my way out of Yosemite, growing in my head. Ceders cropped up like locusts in the gardens of believers.

- but

Walking home on the dirt path behind the cabin house that stuck out like a sore thumb among haciendas reigning the cul-de-sac, I knew something was terribly wrong with me. I peered into the window of the dirty cabin to find dust floating, still, in filtered light. Here there was no echoing laughter, only the entity of cheap tabacco and spilt beer.

- eventually it will all have to go

When the mortician splits me open he will understand how I felt, looking through the cabin window.

Katrina

When the water first began to pool,

creeping like sweat on a child's back,

it went unnoticed

until it breached the crack of light below our front door

and cast it, momentarily shattered,

so it painted the kitchen with

amorphous reds and blues.

Then mama began to scream.

     The photographs! The money! We have to go, we have to go!

Go Go Go Go Go

For the two hours we went

we were shown the purest forms of ourselves

stacked precariously (and mostly wet)

on our respective beds.

This was our judgement day.

The clouds collected and collided

whipped by sentient winds 

(soldiers of the rapture).

How could I be afraid?

I lifted the cross to my lips and pretended to pray

but mama said God had a different plan

The Ark! (our minivan)

my heart warmed despite the splitting cold 

that seeped into my feet's bones

from water now three inches high and well above my ankles

When we finally set our collected belongings

upon the dining room table

I thought they were so small,

that we are all so small

in the eye of a storm.

I said

   But mama, we can't fit all the animals in the car

She didn't even smile,

the expression was fragmented;

a moving-box trembling slightly in her frozen hands.

She perched like a predator on the wrong side of the food chain,

eyes glued to the window. 

In my head I heard choirs singing

saw their mouths open in slow motion,

saliva raining from their lips,

They sang of salvation and sacrifice

as our minivan drifted by in brackish water

21st Century Anthem

My Nona was heaving,
bent over a pillow belonging to the sofa I hated
attempting to sew the seam together
where the zipper had broken from use
and over-use


I smiled at her efforts empathetically but
        It's not a big deal 
she said in her native tongue
        Your mama will buy a new couch soon, you know?
        That's how it is 
(she smiled)


That's how it is
                     
Yet she stayed there,
hunched over the spilling, gluttonous foam
while her fragile thread snapped as quickly as she pushed it through


       There are blackberries in the fridge 
she said


So I went and poured a bowl too big for blackberries
full of blackberries (to the brim!)


And damnit if I didn't eat them all

In    the    art    museum    there    was   a    girl

stark white against cobalt,

eyebrows dark and glaring

cutting her milky skin in angles 

enough to make any man's knees tremble.

The artist assembled her with care

so each passer-by could feel her presence. 

Even when amusing himself

with something across the room

he felt her:

dark hair framing high cheekbones

sheer fabric atop her pallid breast

the rose bud nipple that reverberated sexuality across cool museum floors,
entering the nostrils and lips of a young couple, 

who moved closer together, grazing hands in secret

until the man wandered away and swore under his breath

when,
looking back from the painting 

he saw his partner and felt nothing. 

You are too close for comfort if I can run to you.

Sometimes I dream of walking down your street in blinding sunshine 

and find myself there, 

cold and awake in the night.

Ticking gracefully
as the basins of a watermill,
a watch was wound and put away
a coat misplaced
in some infinite cabinet 
bound the clock work where it lay
for years and years
it counted,
set back each week an hour
until the cogs all rusted
and the battery lost its power
all the while children laughed,
people were in pain
no one heard the buried watch
counting out in vain

Someone will find it lifeless
repair not worth the cost
they'll never stop to pose the question
        where does time go when it is lost?

13

I know him
by the strength of his grip
when I'm reaching the brink of dreams
and he senses me
in early morning silence
the way one feels an ice cube, swallowed
slipping down most private hallways
-mazes in our hollow bodies.

I always thought them bloody;
the epitome of human filth
but I slide through him to find passages gilded in ochre,
molten gold flowing in place of blood,
and a chandelier where his heart should be;
a brain of copper clockwork


It chimes and I count with it:
one, two, thirteen
I thought I heard it shrill my name
but it must have been a dream.