Loose Woman Read online

down the center like a cleft lip.

  You come from the world

  with a river running through it.

  The dead. The living.

  The river Styx.

  You come from the twin Laredos.

  Where the world was twice-named and

  nopalitos flower like a ripe ranchera.

  Ay, corazón, ¿tú que sabes de amor?

  No wonder your heart is filled

  with mil peso notes and jacaranda.

  No wonder the clouds laugh each

  time they cross without papers.

  I know who you are.

  You come from that country

  where the bitter is more bitter

  and the sweet, sweeter.

  Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity

  If

  you came back

  I’d treat you

  like a lost Matisse

  couch you like a Pasha

  dance a Sevillana

  leap and backflip like a Taiwanese diva

  bang cymbals like a Chinese opera

  roar like a Fellini soundtrack

  and laugh like the little dog that

  watched the cow jump over the moon

  I’d be your clown

  I’d tell you funny stories and

  paint clouds on the walls of my house

  dress the bed in its best linen

  And while you slept

  I’d hold my breath and watch

  you move like a sunflower

  How beautiful you are

  like the color inside an ear

  like a conch shell

  like a Modigliani nude

  I’ll cut a bit of your hair this time

  so that you’ll never leave me

  Ah, the softest hair

  Ah, the softest

  If

  you came back

  I’d give you parrot tulips and papayas

  laugh at your stories

  Or I wouldn’t say a word which,

  as you know, is hard for me

  I know when you grew tired

  off you’d go to Patagonia

  Cairo Istanbul

  Katmandu

  Laredo

  Meanwhile

  I’ll have savored you like an oyster

  memorized you

  held you under my tongue

  learned you by heart

  So that when you leave

  I’ll write poems

  Fan of a Floating Woman

  after Shikibu

  Your morning

  glories are beautiful

  to look at in this photograph.

  Beautiful is how I remember them.

  And I think a man who grows morning glories

  because he loves their beautifulness, must be a beautiful man.

  Here. I want to make a gift of this fan. Write my name on it for you

  to place in this man’s house of yours. Perhaps to stake I’ve been here.

  Only a fan. Not a glass shoe. Not a pomegranate seed. Not a coffee

  cup or key. You’ll smooth the sheets. Punch the bruised pillows

  when I’m gone. It will be as it was before. Mundo sin fin.

  The silences again tugged taut as linen.

  Perhaps another will pluck this fan with

  its clatter of courtrooms and pianos.

  Wonder who I am.

  That Beautiful Boy Who Lives Across from the Handy Andy

  invited me

  to his birthday

  party. Twenty-

  eight this Saturday,

  December 2nd, 1989.

  So Saturday

  night I am going

  to put on my prettiest

  dress, the black one

  with the green

  and purple sequins,

  and my cowboy boots.

  And I am going

  to be there

  with a six-pack

  and this poem,

  like any fool who loves

  to look at a cloud,

  or evening poppy,

  or a red red pickup truck.

  for John Hernández in memoriam

  Black Lace Bra Kind of Woman

  for la Terry

  ¡Wáchale! She’s a black lace bra

  kind of woman, the kind who serves

  up suicide with every kamikaze

  poured in the neon blue of evening.

  A tease and a twirl. I’ve seen that

  two-step girl in action. I’ve gambled bad

  odds and sat shotgun when she rambled

  her ’59 Pontiac between the blurred

  lines dividing sense from senselessness.

  Ruin your clothes, she will.

  Get you home way after hours.

  Drive her ’59 seventy-five on 35

  like there is no tomorrow.

  Woman zydeco-ing into her own decade.

  Thirty years pleated behind her like

  the wail of a San Antonio accordion.

  And now the good times are coming. Girl,

  I tell you, the good times are here.

  Down There

  At that moment, Little Flower scratched herself

  where one never scratches oneself.

  from “The Smallest Woman in the World”

  —Clarice Lispector

  Your poem thinks it’s bad.

  Because it farts in the bath.

  Cracks its knuckles in class.

  Grabs its balls in public

  and adjusts—one,

  then the other—

  back and forth like Slinky. No,

  more like the motion

  of a lava lamp.

  You follow me?

  Your poem thinks it

  cool to pee in the pool.

  Waits for the moment

  someone’s watching before

  it sticks a finger up

  its nose and licks

  it. Your poem’s weird.

  The kind that swaggers in like Wayne

  or struts its stuff like Rambo.

  The kind that learned

  to spit at 13 and still

  is doing it.

  It blames its bad habits

  on the Catholic school.

  Picked up words that

  snapped like bra straps.

  Learned words that ignite

  of their own gas

  like a butt hole flower.

  Fell in love with words

  that thudded like stones and sticks.

  Or stung like fists.

  Or stank like shit

  gorillas throw at zoos.

  Your poem never washes

  its hands after using the can.

  Stands around rolling

  toilet paper into wet balls

  it can toss up to the ceiling

  just to watch them stick.

  Yuk yuk.

  Your poem is a used rubber

  sticky on the floor

  the next morning,

  the black elephant

  skin of the testicles,

  hairy as kiwi fruit

  and silly,

  the shaving

  stubble against the purity

  of porcelain,

  one black pubic

  hair on the sexy

  lip of toilet seat,

  the swirl of spit

  with a cream of celery

  center,

  a cigarette

  stub sent hissing

  to the piss pot,

  half-finished

  bottles of beer reeking

  their yeast incense,

  the miscellany of maleness:

  nail clippers and keys,

  tobacco and ashes,

  pennies quarters nickels dimes and

  dollars folded into complicated origami,

  stub of ticket and pencil and cigarette, and

  the crumb of the pockets

  all scattered on the Irish

  linen of the b
edside table.

  Oh my little booger,

  it’s true.

  Because someone once

  said Don’t

  do that!

  you like to do it.

  Baby, I’d like to mention

  the Tampax you pulled with your teeth

  once in a Playboy poem*

  and found it, darling, not so bloody.

  Not so bloody at all, in fact.

  Hardly blood cousin

  except for an unfortunate

  association of color

  that makes you want to swoon.

  Yes,

  I want to talk at length about Menstruation.

  Or my period.

  Or the rag as you so lovingly put it.

  All right then.

  I’d like to mention my rag time.

  Gelatinous. Steamy

  and lovely to the light to look at

  like a good glass of burgundy. Suddenly

  I’m artist each month.

  The star inside this like a ruby.

  Fascinating bits of sticky

  I-don’t-know-what-stuff.

  The afterbirth without the birth.

  The gobs of a strawberry jam.

  Membrane stretchy like

  saliva in your hand.

  It’s important you feel its slickness,

  understand the texture isn’t bloody at all.

  That you don’t gush

  between the legs. Rather,

  it unravels itself like string

  from some deep deep center—

  like a Russian subatomic submarine,

  or better, like a mad Karlov cackling

  behind beakers and blooping spirals.

  Still with me?

  Oh I know, darling,

  I’m indulging, but indulge

  me if you please.

  I find the subject charming.

  In fact,

  I’d like to dab my fingers

  in my inkwell

  and write a poem across the wall.

  “A Poem of Womanhood”

  Now wouldn’t that be something?

  Words writ in blood. But no,

  not blood at all, I told you.

  If blood is thicker than water, then

  menstruation is thicker than brother-hood.

  And the way

  it metamorphosizes! Dazzles.

  Changing daily

  like starlight.

  From the first

  transparent drop of light

  to the fifth day chocolate paste.

  I haven’t mentioned smell. Think

  Persian rug.

  But thicker. Think

  cello.

  But richer.

  A sweet exotic snuff

  from an ancient prehistoric center.

  Dark, distinct,

  and excellently

  female.

  *John Updike’s “Cunts” in Playboy (January 1984), 163.

  Los Desnudos: A Triptych

  I

  In this portrait of The Naked Maja by Goya

  I’ll replace that naughty duquesa

  with a you. And you

  will do nicely too, my maharaja.

  The gitano curls and the skin a tone

  darker than usual because

  you’ve just returned from Campeche.

  All the same, it’s you raised

  with your arms behind your head

  staring coyly at me from the motel pillows.

  Instead of the erotic breasts,

  we’ll have the male eggs to look at

  and the pretty sex.

  In detail will I labor the down

  from belly to the fury of

  pubis dark and sweet,

  luxury of man-thigh

  and coyness of my maja’s eyes.

  My velvet and ruffled eye will linger,

  precise as brushstrokes,

  take pleasure in the looking and look long.

  This is how I would paint you.

  In the leisure of your lounging.

  Both nude and naked to my pleasure.

  Let me look with greedy

  eye and greedy appetite, my

  petty mischief. Let me wonder

  at your wordlessness. What

  are you thinking when you look like that?

  We do not belong one to the other

  except now and again intermittently.

  Of that infinity, freely

  you give yourself to me to take

  and I take freely.

  II

  This time my subject is

  a man with the eyes

  of a nagual or a Zapata.

  But you can’t see his eyes.

  What you get a good view of is his famous backside.

  He is painted à la Diego holding calla lilies

  in the rich siennas and olives of a native.

  He is the one with the sleepy gaze.

  My favorite child and centerpiece.

  I divulge this information because as favorite

  I would like to take my time. But,

  he belongs to another, and I own him

  borrowed.

  When Frida finds out she’ll freak, all hell will break,

  the telephone won’t stop fregando.

  How could a sister? How?

  I’m not sister nor is love now

  nor ever will be

  politically correct.

  I know an artist does what she must do,

  and art is a jealous spouse.

  You share me with my husband,

  and I share you as well

  with that otra you call wife.

  My life, I don’t mind.

  You are a lovely calla.

  I do not look to lure you from your life.

  Don’t think to pluck me to fidelity.

  I love you. You love me.

  We need this passion.

  Agreed.

  III

  Like a Mexican Venus at his toilet,

  I put you here with your back to me

  and your flat Indian ass. Ay, beauty!

  The little angel holding up the mirror

  is me, of course, and me

  refracted from this poem.

  I love you languid like this, a vain

  man, and leisurely I love the slim

  limbs and slim bones. You’re very

  pretty primped and pretty proud as

  any man is wont to be. You’re eternally

  mine to look at and paint as I see fit.

  I can’t quit

  you though

  time and time again

  you quit me.

  I can’t quit the looking

  though you and I are past

  the time of epic wars. Wars

  and love and love and wars

  have disunited and united us.

  All the same, I look back and looking back

  I am reflected in that mirror,

  you with your back to me,

  me facing backwards. Little

  one, I love

  you. I can’t forget you.

  You can’t forget me.

  I won’t let you.

  Mexicans in France

  He says he likes Mexico.

  Especially all that history.

  That’s what I understand

  although my French

  is not that good.

  And wants to talk

  about U.S. racism.

  It’s not often he meets

  Mexicans in the south of France.

  He remembers

  a Mexican Marlon Brando once

  on French tv.

  How, in westerns,

  the Mexicans are always

  the bad guys. And—

  Is it true

  all Mexicans

  carry knives?

  I laugh.

  —Lucky for you

  I’m not carrying my knife

  today.


  He laughs too.

  —I think

  the knife you carry

  is

  abstract.

  My Nemesis Arrives After a Long Hiatus

  I

  I paint my toes matador red.

  Snap freshly dried sheets.

  Pull taut. Tuck corners.

  Wax floors. Rub mirrors.

  Oil my body and sleep

  under the midnoon eye.

  While the thwack, thwack, thwack

  of the carpenter’s hammer

  next door stops long enough

  to watch me slip

  into the pool. A man’s hollow

  laugh getting a load of my Indian ass.

  I wash towels. Scent linen.

  Stock fridge with things to eat.

  Slice pineapple, melon, strawberries.

  Inspect my body where the tan

  line stops abrupt as a stand-up comic. Silly belly soft as

  the yolk of an egg.

  I wash with soap made from Italian

  honey. Wrap a clean towel

  around my hair.

  Perfume skin. Paint

  lips into a perfect

  bull’s-eye.

  Admire clouds,

  how they travel with

  the grace of snails.

  When sun leaves, you’ll come.

  II

  Crumpled pillow. Coffee cup.

  Flaccid rubbers on the bedside table.

  Chair askew. Breakfast jam on the carpet.

  Cigarette crushed into a saucer.

  From the road, your car—

  that burgundy dollop

  color of my menstruation—

  leaving and leaving and leaving me.

  III

  My goddess Guadalupe is

  more powerful than your god Marx.

  Volviste—¿no?

  Volverás.

  IV

  I light my bedroom with faroles and papel picado.

  Paper lanterns, paper flags bought at the wooden

  stands in front of the San Miguel Church

  at Christmas. Tissue flags

  from one beam to the next. Sleep