tonight
I hoarded a sunset
built up the transparencies
+ kept them as my own
threatening a line of exhaustion
to those boxed in
sparrows with immobile wings,
feet chained to safe deposit
boxes + quarter rolls –
years spent resending receipts
to the permanent view from the kitchen window
I live on the tug of accuracy
while trimming string from the armpits
of sweaters -
the women at sewing machines
locked to their hands sting my mouth
with the way to move inside
our open silence
what I do know –
the baker downtown wants to brush
your hair from your shoulder,
packing tape pulls my fingerprints onto cardboard -
my name stalls second to the religion of movement.
+ how the foreman squints– bearing teeth at sunlight,
propels on one meaning -
lose your desire under machinery
take, do,
excel,
+ forget revolt under the pulse of
stenciled bank slips
but perhaps I will beat my fists against the ransom of
daily numbers
+ leave myself incriminating messages stapled to the
back of my sock heels –
what motivation tears you down the driveway?
the slap of coffee down my throat clears
paths through the web of my fingers –
leaves me angling through open doors
ahhing at the skeletons of old friendships,
smacking me clean with resounding warnings –
don’t take more than yourself
+ don’t ever leave with anything else
you can’t possibly,
anything but dissolves within 48 hours
leaving sticky fingerprints on
kitchen tiles –
a mess to clean up –
a loss of words.
29/10/00
climb pedal over pedal
scorched lettuce
and rinds of
daily breakfast nooks
surprised new jersey
grandmother summer
lungs and lungs all
across numbered roads
sequence + sequence
finishing afternoon
for stomach
waist
my arms hung flaps.
my mother +
corn
salad
acceptable condiment
condemnation
pluck through sore
pockets
nickels,
fiction receipts,
lifting dinner plates
sky high
to cracker box
next to the courtyard
+ through black bars
names perfect
+ tasteful
caught the leaking through
blinked blinds
never more a sanskrit letter
thrown on a sloppy razor
embedded table.
autumn color
season – mode of compassion
sneaker style
pushed through charging
block syllables.
hyphenate +
break green benches
lover,
to be fooled – bells buzz
in rainstretch
hours to love 4-7
giant six
no more sense in
water running pipes
through toilet
found season on sweat
on wall
rash along bottom
floor
tonight a purple
skirt on cement
leaves for lying
you ransom
last name
unnamed no palm trees
could be birch
i would remember them swaying
visiting great ancestors
and in a perfect accent
speak of the childhood
of my great great grandfather
who came to NY to be a writer
and bore a photographer son
who wasn't taught spanish
and snapped pictures of
white dancers and city buildings
when it rained
won great prizes and was known
enough to be preserved
so that i could hang the white
smiles and tap shoes on my wall
photographed by
Alfoso Jose Fernandez
who spoke no spanish,
and loved New York City.
there was an accent on the
a
originally
alfonso's son kept it in his signature
but removed it in careful situations,
when business suits of the 50s
squinted at him at job interviews
in my father's art,
i can see the accent hovered over
our last name
surprised.
now in college i still know no spanish,
not even one tradition
no family recipes on flaky brown
paper bleeding history
bleeding flavor
speaking of the language that is now
questioned by glances
at my driver's license
at&t phone operators that jumble words
together with a thick tongue and i
say sorry
i have no idea.
my youth was dances of 80s pop
bubblegum shaking hips to
coca-cola and hightops
the spanish family 500 years ago
would burn on my fingertips
if not for the assimilation that pours
over my middle class parents and through
my american language
which speaks of boundaries made and
lips and laughter closed.
bedroom
now that here is new skin on my fingers
they sleep in warm bath water.
blisters from banging against metal,
finally edged away.
a week away, factory grease still shining on leather.
slings and pillows
and tomato soup in two layers.
I’m back to where I broke my tricycle –
still left in the garage.
my nerves won’t bolt the wheels,
I’ve got 20 years of marriage,
and the vases of flowers in
the kitchen – filing next to the telephone.
legs softening two weeks + there’s always
a television show at night with questions
and a finale
I nod with the crook of
my elbow and ask,
pour liquid over the knots,
how can that still make a bed?
pour 40 years over a back,
which ones still work?
knitting
tracks are bubbled plastic
down to the laundrymat
recovered hands singing
dinner time -
let me through an awning
cold till 8.
superstitious knive settings,
how to ladle seven bowls -
change for coin-op toilets
leak out all ears.
