Loose Woman Read online

  I sprout like the potato in its greedy gloom.

  Yowl like the black cat howling with its rowdy need.

  Shut up! What I want is to be

  saved like the lucky fuck

  when the gypsies arrive in the nick,

  their bandoneónes and violins

  releasing the prisoners of the brain’s Bastille!

  Why not? I’m for emotions running amok tonight,

  breaking china and getting fucked.

  I’m a regular Notre Dame, I tell you.

  Little braindoors and gargoyled gutters,

  and the frothy mob with their machetes and clubs

  wild about me, I tell you,

  positively screaming blood.

  Night Madness Poem

  There’s a poem in my head

  like too many cups of coffee.

  A pea under twenty eiderdowns.

  A sadness in my heart like stone.

  A telephone. And always my

  night madness that outs like bats

  across this Texas sky.

  I’m the crazy lady they warned you about.

  The she of rumor talked about—

  and worse, who talks.

  It’s no secret.

  I’m here. Under a circle of light.

  The light always on, resisting a glass,

  an easy cigar. The kind

  who reels the twilight sky.

  Swoop circling.

  I’m witch woman high

  on tobacco and holy water.

  I’m a woman delighted with her disasters.

  They give me something to do.

  A profession of sorts.

  Keeps me industrious

  and of some serviceable use.

  In dreams the origami of the brain

  opens like a fist, a pomegranate,

  an expensive geometry.

  Not true.

  I haven’t a clue

  why I’m rumpled tonight.

  Choose your weapon.

  Mine—the telephone, my tongue.

  Both black as a gun.

  I have the magic of words,

  the power to charm and kill at will.

  To kill myself or to aim haphazardly.

  And kill you.

  I Don’t Like Being in Love

  Not like this. Not tonight,

  a white stone. When you’re 36

  and seething like sixteen

  next to the telephone,

  and you don’t know where.

  And worse—with whom?

  I don’t care for this fruit. This

  Mexican love hidden in the boot.

  This knotted braid. Birthcord buried

  beneath the knuckle of the heart.

  Cat at the window scratching at

  the windswept moon

  scurrying along, scurrying along.

  Trees rattling. Screen

  doors banging raspy.

  Brain a whorl of swirling

  fish. Oh, not like this.

  Not this.

  Amorcito Corazón

  Ya no eres

  mi amorcito

  ¿verdad?

  Ya lo supe.

  Ya lo sé.

  Fuiste

  y ya no eres.

  Fuimos

  y se acabó.

  ¿Cómo les diría?

  ¿Cómo se explica?

  Te conocí

  ¿y ahora?

  no.

  A Little Grief Like Gouache

  Without a ping

  Or pang or knuckle rap or

  Notion

  Tobacco-stained

  How do you do

  Thrum without a name

  Droopy as a sunflower

  Delinquent as a god

  Full of riotous ache and goofy

  A Van Gogh ocher

  Drizzled did and giddy

  Left me

  Light-tippled dizzy

  Fled

  Full Moon and You’re Not Here

  Useless moon,

  too beautiful to waste.

  But you, my Cinderella,

  have the midnight curfew,

  a son waiting to be picked up from his den meeting,

  and the fractured marriage weighing on your head

  like a crown of thorns.

  Oh my beauty,

  it’s not polite

  to keep me waiting.

  To send me reeling into a spiral

  and then to say good night.

  I smoke a cigar,

  play a tango,

  gulp my gin and tonic.

  Goddamn you.

  Full moon and you’re not here.

  I take off the silk slip,

  the silver bangles.

  You’re in love with my mind.

  But sometimes, sweetheart,

  a woman needs a man

  who loves her ass.

  My Friend Turns Beautiful Before My Eyes

  Sir Walter Raleigh,

  dimity and damask,

  rococo and arabesque,

  batiste and challis,

  handkerchief and crumpled glove.

  Love, I don’t know

  how you suddenly grew lovely,

  why I never noticed last

  summer, nor the summers before

  when the hard sun died

  anything before it bloomed.

  My seasonal lovers have come and gone.

  And you were there, friend,

  cold as porcelain,

  mute as the milk moon.

  I was afraid of you then.

  Did you notice

  I never hovered

  in the cab of your pickup

  when we good-byed,

  when the pecan trees

  rustled and shushed.

  A pink lantern burning

  patient on my porch.

  Nipped kiss. Screen door

  slammed. I danced

  barefoot with the cat

  when I was alone.

  Glass of wine,

  candle, my brush

  across my hair a hundred

  times. And now,

  here you are.

  Little asterisk, little

  How-I-wonder-what-you-are

  upon my linen.

  Incest! Error!

  My head split in two—

  half of me preening its feathers

  the other watching from

  a stool and sneering—

  Fool!

  Perras

  I can’t imagine that goofy white woman

  with you. Her pink skin on your dark.

  Your tongue on hers. I can’t

  imagine without laughing.

  Who would’ve thought.

  Not her ex-boyfriend—

  your good ol’ ex-favorite best buddy,

  the one you swore was thicker than kin,

  blood white brother, friend—

  who wants to slit you open like a pig

  and I don’t blame him.

  Isn’t it funny.

  He acting Mexican.

  You acting white.

  I can’t imagine this woman.

  Nor your white ex-wife. Nor any

  of those you’ve hugged and held,

  so foreign from the country we shared.

  Damn. Where’s your respect?

  You could’ve used a little imagination.

  Picked someone I didn’t know. Or at least,

  a bitch more to my liking.

  Unos Cuantos Piquetitos

  Here—the bull

  ’s eye of my heart,

  snappy red

  flag against bone

  white page.

  Here, that electrical

  cord—my jugular.

  Looking forward to the

  guillotine precision.

  Here, the easy wrists.

  Quick, neat, convenient.

  For your comic amusement,

  that Dodo, my womb,

  pinched
from disuse.

  And here, gentlemen, ladies!

  mis palabras.

  With Lorenzo at the Center of the Universe, el Zócalo, Mexico City

  We had to cross the street twice

  because of rats. But there it was.

  The zócalo at night and la Calle de la Moneda

  like a dream out of Canaletto. Forget

  Canaletto. This was real.

  And you were there, Lorenzo.

  The cathedral smoky-eyed and still

  rising like a pyramid after all

  these centuries. You named the four

  holy centers—Amecameca, Tepeyac, and two

  others I can’t remember. I remember you,

  querida flecha, and how all the words I knew

  left me. The ones in English and the few

  in Spanish too.

  This is the center of the universe,

  I said and meant it. This is eternity.

  This moment. Now. And love,

  that wisp of copal that scared the hell

  out of you when I mentioned it,

  love is eternal, though

  what eternity has to do with tomorrow,

  I don’t know. Understand?

  I’m not sure you followed me.

  Not now, not then. But I know

  what I felt when I put my hand

  on your heart, and there was that kiss,

  just that, from the center of the universe.

  Or at least my universe.

  Lorenzo, is the center of the universe

  always so lonely at night and so

  crowded in the day? Earlier

  I’d been birthed from the earth

  when the metro bust loose at noon.

  Stumbled up the steps over Bic pens

  embroidered with Batman logos, red

  extension cords, vinyl wallets, velveteen

  roses, pumpkin seed vendors, brilliant

  masons looking for work. I remember the boy

  with the burnt foot carried by his mother,

  the smell of meat frying, a Styrofoam

  plate sticky with grease.

  At night we fled

  the racket of Garibaldi and mariachi

  chasing cars down Avenida Lázaro Cárdenas

  for their next meal. At La Hermosa Hortensia,

  lights bright as an ice cream parlor,

  faces sweaty and creased with grief.

  My first pulque warm and frothy like semen.

  On the last evening we said good-bye

  along two streets named after rivers. I

  fumbled with the story of Borges and his Delia.

  When we meet again beside what river?

  But this was no poem. Only mosquitoes

  biting like hell and a good-bye

  kiss like a mosquito bite that left

  me mad for hours. After all,

  hadn’t it taken centuries for us

  to meet at the center of the universe

  and consummate a kiss?

  Lorenzo, I forget what’s real.

  I mix up the details of what happened

  with what I witnessed inside my

  universe. Is it like that for you?

  But I thought for a moment, I really did,

  that a kiss could be a universe.

  Or sex. Or love, that old shoe. See.

  Still hopeless. Still writing poems

  for pretty men. Half of me alive

  again. The other shouting from the sidelines,

  Sit down, clown.

  Ah, Lorenzo, I’m a fool.

  Eternity or bust. That’s how it is with me.

  Even if eternity is simply one kiss,

  one night, one moment. And if love isn’t

  eternal, what’s the point?

  If I knew the words I’d explain

  how a man loves a woman before love

  and how he loves her after

  is never the same. How the two halves split

  and can’t be put back whole again.

  Isn’t it a shame?

  You named the holy centers but forgot

  one—the heart. Said every

  time you’d pass this zócalo

  you’d think of me and that kiss

  from the center of the universe.

  I remember you, Lorenzo. See

  this zócalo? Remember me.

  I Awake in the Middle of the Night and Wonder If You’ve Been Taken

  At any moment, the soldiers could arrive.

  At any given second, Sarajevo could surrender.

  One could give up as well the nuisance of surviving.

  At any moment, a precise second might claim you.

  At any decisive point, God might not give a damn.

  You’re there, in that city. You don’t count. You’re not history.

  In my own bed of down and vintage linen,

  beside an altar of Buddhas and Madres Dolorosas

  and lace and Storyville mirrors,

  I’m here. Awake from the bad dream.

  I’m a woman like you.

  I don’t count either.

  Not a thing I say.

  Not a thing I do.

  Small Madness

  I swear, I will not

  let go to these

  small madnesses

  at two a.m. I will not

  be manic as a

  Marilyn Monroe

  seeking her savior-

  executioner. I will not

  love like heroin,

  be martyr of extreme self-

  inflicted grief, nor

  romance myself into a

  tired “Fin.”

  This I swear this near

  year of my life’s end,

  my life dangling,

  a live wire, some

  fierce and likely

  trick, a Mexico City fire-

  eater’s deep and desperate

  breath. I swear,

  life of mine, thick as a

  foreign coin, beautiful

  as money and as brutal,

  you are my first allegiance.

  I have no other lover.

  I press my mouth to yours,

  my faithful wife-beater,

  and stifle this mariachi

  howl.

  Heart, My Lovely Hobo

  Heart, my lovely hobo, you

  remember, then, that afternoon in Venice

  when all the pigeons rose flooding the piazza

  like a vaulted ceiling. That was you

  and you alone who grinned.

  Fat as an oyster,

  pulpy as a plum,

  raw, exposed, naive,

  dumb. As if love

  could be curbed, and grace

  could save you from the daily beatings.

  Those blue jewels of flowers in the arbor

  that the bees loved. Oh, there’ll be other

  flowers, a cat maybe beside the bougainvillea,

  a little boat with flags glittering in the harbor

  to make you laugh,

  to make you spiral once more.

  Not this throbbing.

  This.

  I Am on My Way to Oklahoma to Bury the Man I Nearly Left My Husband For

  Your name doesn’t matter.

  I loved you.

  We loved.

  The years

  I waited

  by the river for your pickup

  truck to find me. Footprints

  scattered in the yellow sand.

  Husband, mother-

  in-law, kids wondering

  where I’d gone.

  You wouldn’t

  the years I begged. Would

  the years I wouldn’t. Only

  one of us had sense at a time.

  I won’t see you again.

  I guess life presents you

  choices and you choose. Smarter

  over the years. Oh smarter.

  The sensible thing smarting

&
nbsp; over the years, the sensible

  thing to excess, I guess.

  My life—deed I have

  done to artistic extreme—I

  drag you with me. Must wake

  early. Ride north tomorrow.

  Send you off. Are you fine?

  I think of you often, friend,

  and fondly.

  Cloud

  If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper.

  —Thich Nhat Hanh

  Before you became a cloud, you were an ocean, roiled and murmuring like a mouth. You were the shadow of a cloud crossing over a field of tulips. You were the tears of a man who cried into a plaid handkerchief. You were a sky without a hat. Your heart puffed and flowered like sheets drying on a line.

  And when you were a tree, you listened to trees and the tree things trees told you. You were the wind in the wheels of a red bicycle. You were the spidery María tattooed on the hairless arm of a boy in downtown Houston. You were the rain rolling off the waxy leaves of a magnolia tree. A lock of straw-colored hair wedged between the mottled pages of a Victor Hugo novel. A crescent of soap. A spider the color of a fingernail. The black nets beneath the sea of olive trees. A skein of blue wool. A tea saucer wrapped in newspaper. An empty cracker tin. A bowl of blueberries in heavy cream. White wine in a green-stemmed glass.

  And when you opened your wings to wind, across the punchedtin sky above a prison courtyard, those condemned to death and those condemned to life watched how smooth and sweet a white cloud glides.

  Tú Que Sabes de Amor

  for Ito Romo

  You come from that country

  where the bitter is more bitter

  and the sweet, sweeter.

  You come from that town split