Embers of Smoldering Homes

Embers of Smoldering Homes


It is a major war from
a manufacturing plant
near Ciudad Juárez, a concrete
dust smell from the maquiladoras
cools. There is a pool
of liquid forming
on the stone floor.
When Érika Gándara, the only
cop in Guadalupe Distrito Bravos
was killed the buzzards
were fucking in the wind.
See the brown ribs poking
through the side
of the hound, behind
the broken refrigerator.
The dog is looking for a guaco
leaf, or Saint Teresa.
She has not been seen
since two days before
Christmas. A painting
of the black Mary is wrapped
in plastic wrap, next to the rifle.
Who else is wrapped
in plastic, like drug baggies
or a piece of flesh: Praxédis, Leticia,
Esperanza, Hermila, Felicitas,
Lourdes, Elvira, Gabriela, Elsa Luz…
The body has been in the desert
for at least nine days.
A wire chicken coop,
a plaster wall, she vests herself
and waits for you like a hand
stripped of a moving world.
A hand stripped of a moving
world waits for you.
It snaps its fingers
on 2 and 4, a “black snap”
or a sponginess encased
in desire. The fleshy leaves
of the agave bend a white
feather on a girl’s brow.
The goatskin deflates
by the opening where,
lashed to itself, she pulls
back her flat breath,
her brittle and meager
clavicle unscrew the pain.
A niña’s rose black edge
stumps the coroner
who says something is striking
me, my chrome raindrop,
my jacaranda, pouch of bone.
In Dublin, Ohio,
a sortie of jackals
split the scissors behind the mask
mouth and “cut loose”
for a long needle-devouring night
into the rawhide axis
of dawn, of dung and ashes.
If the word Mexico means
“Place at the Center of the Moon”
then these fabric fireflies
and jutting hips are perfumed
honeyed vibrato moans
and the manic cartels
slice their own heads,
cancer-eaten, like a faceless jaw
snapping the desert moon.
We didn’t meet in Mexico’s
dark carbon, stretching palpitations
in black armor but a wooden
column of the archangel
who witnesses casually
the teporochos who eat genitals
and fuck watermelons.
When you take the last bus
to Piedras Negras a bullet
has struck the remaining tissue
not of livestock or bodyguard
but the moon’s own leather aorta.

Afrofuturism

Afrofuturism


A brass tube in an S-shape is the matrimonial yoke.
And the numerology of a gold-sewn cloak.
Calfskin pendants and a pump’s quilted glaze,
Crimson and azure, some dumb hovering maze.

Sun Ra said: People are interested in everything
But true wisdom, like hoot owls, nails, ghouls,
Pyramids and triangles. A funky donkey tightens
And passes by as the girls sip ginger ales.

Hemphill said: People keep looking rearward
For the tradition. The tradition is forward! Not
What you did last week, but this week.
The blues is a loop we barrel through.

Bloom into each other beam to rough
Hewn-beam. Move your leg sweet darling.

Roundhouse Kick to the Solar Plexus

Roundhouse Kick to the Solar Plexus

Hand that gentleman the brass shears.
We gingerly wrap tape around our knuckles
And prepare to cut some heads.
The governor is fat as a dump truck

And plays free and loose with the facts.
The pundit is pink-faced half-wit
Determined to lower the denominator
While men twice his better rot

In a Newark jail for an ounce of Bambalacha.
I would like the Dallas businessman
To live for a week in the shoes of Eleanor Bumpurs.
If something disgusting looks in your eyes,

Flip your collar and wear your sunglasses.
If we don’t tell you, no one will know.

Sycamore Trees

Sycamore Trees

A cough surfaces through the mouth.
Immobile flight through a black enormous sky….

Daydreams, yellow and royal kiosks rotting
By the pier. The pigeons’ powder glow rose.

My room is a tollgate; swarms with distorted
Anatomy and flat, striped faces, air scented with cherry.

Mexico isn’t final. Mexico is not a passage
Through which I journey into green, secret sobbing.

When she curls in the corner, her hollow eyes
Mean everything is thinned by heat.

I want to ask her something, like a thread
I read through the pages of a book.

Horses ride the sky, their hooves touch the terrible air.
I will see you in the branches of the sycamore trees.