Cabrona

Thin woman wedded to this world
by charred steel wire,

they light fires, call you Flaquita.  They buy
your homemade .45 rounds

with disdain on their faces and good gold.
You are not to be told.

Your silence breaks down
the highest walls.  Whole towns fall

to that cool quiet -- what it sounds like
when you listen to them.

You hear every prayer they dare
utter at a shrine

some outlaw carved for you
in offerings of bone.

A pobrecita genuflects before your forbidden grin.
Behind her, a rangy dog stalks alone.

Gibbous

Nervousness in the darkness.
A comma ends your flat smile.
__________The park
has been closed since 10
we agree
__________under sudden
filigree of shadows -- branches
_____groan over our heads.

Night's razor nicks
__________moon's edge,
cuts the moon loose from a cloud.
Now we're surrounded:  a crowd
of old growth trunks
glow whitely, warm
with promises that storms
survived, overcome

are settings for slow quiet
as gold is for gems.
You take my arm, then
you walk me
downhill
past a vigilant wood
peopled by Love's ghosts
and ubiquitous Need.

Sorry

Drunk is such a pleasant state to be in
here, under the stars, with you.

The highway hardly makes a sound.
See those lights, drifting this way?

A tanker arrives from distant China.
I wonder if they hear the foghorn?

This night is warm, I agree --
but still, keep the scarf on, if only for me.

Nothing, I just couldn't help but exclaim.
Apologies for breaking the calm.

Cicadas

Dormancy -- what's the use?
Who's to know we even existed?  Truth.

Rising drone, shrill with rue.
Swarm drunk through trees in June.

Fat thunk:  carcass slaps bark.
Eyes aglow -- we never fly in the dark.

Nestle under moss, under shale, pry
twigs aside, try to hide

our summer song in oak, pale, brown and dry.
Thrumming loudly now in manzanita.  Broke

a branch on the way down
to answer for Northern, wind-borne sounds.

Nohemi

It hides behind whitewash, within
vestal stucco so as not to offend

las abuelitas who wear pretty dresses
and daub their foreheads with ash.

It's the self she's familiar with
the self she doesn't dare let on

she loves unconditionally -- a girl!
Imagine the wars such a revelation

would ignite.  I write of her true heart
unmitigated and unalloyed

by tradition, obedience, or that favorite
t-shirt of hers (it sports a portrait

of Chavela Vargas); Nohemi can often
be seen wearing it beneath a studious frown

and round, red-framed glasses she doesn't need.
In any quiet moment, it's obvious

her ear leads her mind.  The discerning,
not to mention the pure of heart, note this in her.

Un indio que sobrevivieron las hieleras
le preguntó por las direcciones aqui, en este El Dorado --

this citadel of gold and ghosts.
He could tell she was a true friend:

a secret queen of the strange and poor.
He saw through the stucco to the warm, hard adobe and straw

at the core.  Now he can admire
this new generation, their reverence

for law and blood.  Nohemi, after this
walked on in silence to work

pondering imponderables like,
"Are the envied enviable?"

She wonders briefly that every day
this winter the air has been perfumed with wood smoke.

Antediluvian

A rising tide lifts all boats.
A tsunami inundates the coast.

Who are we when tears flood in?
A damned nation wailing in sin?

Or are we aboriginals bound for higher ground?
Anticipation:  the lonesome, busy sound

of waves lapping against rocks.
A force of nature and man are ever locked.

She who works for waters to be calmed
pockets her tips and whispers a psalm.

Arabia

Naphtha wells up out of Oriental sand
That hard reek of flint, black bubbles --
Greek fire burns my hand
Persian ships in a conflagration
Meanwhile, on land, an handful of Argives
Perish to the last man
Victorious over Xerxes, whose span
Descends into shame, senile
Your ziggurat, old man, melts on tan
Shores under waves that continually break
Give yourself a hand
You learned what to take.

Special Privileges

The crime in question is transient and vast;

It has something to do with what may not last.

Something someone said or made --

Someone who took too much for granted

And always may.  Smell lavender:

Derision and fear.  Keep it near

As a sort of defiance.  Prick your ears,

Follow what you hear to hell:

If you lived here

You'd be home by now.

Sacred cow:  A pebble in your shoe, cursed at aloud.

Who is your enemy,

Pretty little girl?

Who piques you to kill

Under the gaze of the owl?

It swoops down from mistletoe,

It dives low through history

Known only to the bones of dirt,

Grist for only grandeur's mirth.

Fait Accompli

Beg, plead --
you do not move

terra antiqua
shakes you

off to mom's basement
or into the Peace Corps,

to a heretofore unknown
smugness old coworkers

aren't aware you feel.
They have lives, you see,

all too brief, as they saw.
Horrific truth,

a reminder they hate:
advice, alarmingly free.

"Go West," said your harried
aunt fondling her rosary.

A brother in the clergy,
a sister emerging

from the package store.
Who's that piece of shit she's with?

It's not your business anymore.
Cast your lot on the Pacific shore;

from there, the world
doesn't sparkle.  Now it's yours.

Mestizos Como Yo

Tar flats and sand,
taken for oases in mirage.

Horizon:  the edge of land,
sky's limit.  Scrub oaks skulk

up a golden savannah hill -- twist,
bend.  Is this the shit for which

conquistadors killed men, women, children?
Laugh with los Californios, ever known

for that singular way of theirs:
How little may a man do

and still appear the envy
of any caballero?  Shrewd,

lazy, dressed to the nines.
Lives lived richly outside lines

_____drawn by forbears, out of the frigid
Virgin's shadow.

O por los padres, que tienen corazones de arena fría.
Pobrecitos, los indios.