Poetry

For the first year, living off the heat of sagebrush, these 
were the things that kept us going: our faces as they are 
or were, hog black and shining, turned to 
bask in the slough of May crisp moonlight

Tell me, good small insignificant day
is it time 
for my selves to learn to live with one another

Skull-faced Venus impales you. Chalchiuhtlicue, Goddess of the East. Venus, West. Directions, too, in conflict. War inside creates war outside. All the outsides. All the insides.

One by one the neighborhood songbirds visited
and stripped us of our brightest threads of pain

carrying them off for purposes that we couldn’t
quite fathom. So we got a dog, felt a little better.

Ixchel, I feel you crossing. Night womb. Tell me where the seeds go.

Alex, do you think God appreciates us
this time of year, going out

in knit maroons, black leather? I’m still no good
at smoking but I liked best the part of your party

Starlings know to veer. Anatomically attuned to each premonition of each starling. Sacred space.

Okay so when we were little playing in the woods
every time we heard a gunshot hollow and clear

my brother would clutch his chest and fall over
every single time and it worked every time

Lorca saw the Duende separate from the muse & the angel. Bodily. Inheritance. Tlazoltéotl, all passages through you.