Noon Mass in the Cathedral
A hundred glossy-faced believers in the cool embrace of stone. Their prayers rise to the noon day sun trailing lunch bags. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
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Political rally in Tlaxcala
The absurdity of it now: fireworks and too much margarina, yellow shirts, urgent faces, a girl willing herself empty. That mannequin and how it strolled. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
Lightning in Coatepec
Rain in our last hours, that brooding sky. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
Schoolyard in Cuetzalan
Could you live here? he asked, meaning the trumpets and the bone-rattling streets, the crisp white shirts and someone forever sweeping a sidewalk to dust. Could you? he asked, meaning our son, unborn, and our daughter’s lily white hand. Darling, a part of us always will. CLICK ON RECORDING TO LISTEN
Mamacitas
Voices spill from the valley, cool and round, too early for dogs. Women call themselves to work as the clouds part and the earth twitches: how darkness anticipates dawn. Dress the church in heliconias. Fly the flag of the mother of mothers. Walk on the bones of the boisterous dead. These streets are a…
Noon bells in El Centro
The cathedral is sinking. The state, agitated, has responded with scaffolds and prosthetics. Everyone has noted this except the cleaning woman who each night slips in to touch the Lady of the Immaculate Conception and wipe away her dust like tears. (Originally published as “Teotihuacan,” in Goodbye: Poems for Leaving, Cubicle Press, 2007)…
Printing Press
We are all devils here, where iron rings with the heft of words. CLICK ON THE RECORDING
Red-winged blackbirds
Call it summer, call it promise, call it radio from a Dodge patiently polished. We lay on our backs in the sun that month, holding vigil for September. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
Train coming around the tracks
The silence was the most disturbing part. The whole world standing staring at these metal sinews tripped and quick-frozen. Now with summer at its heaviest, the air burning with the ingratitude of August and the back-and-forthing of combines. There’s been much hail — we’ve huddled tsk-tsking, watching the sky like a felon. What did we…
Dawn chorus with geese
The birds and the reeds and the morning cows knee-deep in muck. Empty bleachers where the sky used to live. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN