and step out
unnoticed
with a misleading calmness
OUR LADY’S WILL
After the civilian’s last sorrow
there comes a time to clear the air
I take charge of restoring my orchard
scraping the varnish oxidizing on the pine boards
some nights I remember my mother
behind a verdaccio of missing flesh
when she brings her gold in a red base to water
and the engraved foils are sent to the automobile industry
my mother, scroll-maker, gestures with her knife
when she scrapes off meat and hair from these skins
inscribed over and over again
Ikebana’s gesture
winter defeated by
branches of forsythia
and I wash her cut fingers with lists of the Ostracas
scoring records on mollusks,
where the unloved ones sign up
palimpsests with laws erased for rewritten
groundwork
delirium a la carte, new visions, variations
for the keepers of the world
my mother guiding us down the road tosses me
unto eternal life
And I resume the wearing out of my hands
by the work of living
their dry lines
a mummified nun
to consecrate the shift
dining on the best part of the fish
its eyes
The kings of the kitchen save
the palate of the species
Saint Lucia or Saint Theresa
behind silver masks
in a catafalque
have scattered their pupils on a platter
The blind girl in a sarcophagus of Venetian crystal
with Orpheus as her guide
arrives among 20-year-old tourists with rubber boots, defying
high water, and he whispers into my ears that he is alone
that the beasts
inch closer every day
I know his old story
I plunge my hand to bring you light from home
I kneel between your legs
Only the eye of the cell phone vibrating
I DON’T MEAN A JAPANESE LIFE, I MEAN MY MOTHER
Chewing on my mother
a late-morning blue bird sighted through the branches
of Inwood with Alina
pecking at her eyes of a hung woman
I am not my mother’s raven
my gaze ends beautiful and dark
I am no longer the vulture’s fragrance or the idiot’s or my mother’s plea
Alina leads me through a field of asphodel
where my mother approaches
leave her there,
my creature,
let your mother reign
and keep going
on your own
Colaterales/Collateral Page 7