for seven days
we left him 

on the lawn
near a flower 

no english 
in his spine

just asleep 
like jesus 

he is a cloud
admit it

Yet the peach tree 
still rises
& falls with fruit & without
birds eat it the sparrows fight
our desert       

            burns with trash & drug
it also breathes & sprouts
vines & maguey

laws pass laws with scientific walls
detention cells   husband
                           with the son
                        the wife &
the daughter who
married a citizen   
they stay behind broken slashed

un-powdered in the apartment to
deal out the day
             & the puzzles
another law then   another
Mexican
          Indian
                      spirit exile

migration                     sky
the grass is mowed then blown
by a machine  sidewalks are empty
clean & the Red Shouldered Hawk
peers
down  — from
an abandoned wooden dome
                       an empty field

it is all in-between the light
every day this     changes a little

yesterday homeless &
w/o papers                  Alberto
left for Denver a Greyhound bus he said
where they don’t check you

walking working
under the silver darkness
            walking   working
with our mind
our life

^{translated from the Spanish by Muna Lee}

I embraced her fifteen years,
    And kissed, as I drew to me,
The flower-like face, the chestnut hair,
    Beside a singing sea.

“Think of me, never forget—
    No matter how far I may be!”
And I saw a shooting star
    Fall suddenly into the sea.

I can’t remember my dad calling me a sissy,
but he definitely told me not to be a sissy.
I secretly (or not so secretly) liked all the sissy
things. We had a hunting dog named Sissy.
Really: Sissy. My father nicknamed my sister: Sissy.
Still, he says, “How’s Sissy?” and calls her Sissy
when she goes home to visit him. Belinda (Sissy)
is one of the toughest people I know. My sissy
(sister) has kicked someone’s ass, which isn’t sissy-
ish, I guess, though I want to redefine sissy
into something fabulous, tough, tender, “sissy-
tough.” Drag queens are damn tough and sissies.
I’m pretty fucking tough and a big, big sissy,
too. And kind. Tough and kind and happy: a sissy.

Winter is ceaseless ~ streets ~ phantom trees caged in fog ~ light and its beautiful doom ~ The scent of leaves ~  green and dead ~ arrives through windows like a timid fantasma ~ There are tiny spiders in the eaves ~ the color of forgettable stones ~ I don’t have the heart ~ to kill them ~ Today ~ I found a squirrel ~ dreaming ~  the sleep of the young and unknowing ~ I pray for a world ~ scatter-starred with that kind ~ of tenderness ~ Nothing hears me ~ Let’s pretend ~ the clock is frozen ~ in its sturdy shroud ~  that our 3,000 weeks ~  are the start ~ We began ~  in the land of mangroves and abandonment ~ hibiscus and metal ~ egret and engine ~  predator sun ~  skin, so much skin ~  sky with its commandments ~  sky like no other ~  concrete rising ~  falling ~  altars and offerings ~ cigar smoke santos hope gold velas blood gallina rum ~ shells to guard the crossroads ~  the drilling eyes of reptiles and men ~  my people who I long for ~  my people who I hide from ~ My sister,  I write these words ~ a lifetime away ~ at the foot of the mountains ~  another sea ~ vaster galaxy ~  primordial and without memories ~ House of my nightmares, gone ~  Graves unattended ~ You ask me why I left ~ I say I am a triple horse ~  forever running ~ to the next to the next to the next ~  Where will I end? ~ My baby cronedom has arrived ~  The track now points to my bones ~ in flecks or stashed beneath ~ the thorned trunk of a ceiba  ~  I know just the one.

I stared at mangoes piled outside
restaurants as the morning pho

steamed into the street— 
the air like a wet towel

and a taxi driver said to me, as I sat in the back seat,
“We do ancestor worship here more than Buddhism.”

I saw the day go like a fig leaf against
a smashed wall in the old quarter,

lizards snaked around the calendar
as days mark the dead.

Back home now—the dead are with me  
in my kitchen—I love them all—
they play a trombone in my heart;

they play brush sticks over the skin of a drum
they tambourine the light on the wall
they swallow a sax whole.

So I’m arranging flower pots
on the kitchen windowsill.

So what if the sun is a pale circle
and the rhododendron leaves are curled
up like scared cats in the reeds.

I stick one candle next to the white
orchid with yellow stamens.
I stick another next to the pale green orchid

with crimson speckles.
I drape the philodendron over the yellow
pitcher my aunt brought back from Paris.

What’s ghostlier than gray morning winter light?
Still the glaze shines on the winding vines
of the ceramic plates from Jerusalem.

Candle-smoke curls around my sight of
two yellow finches perched on the feeder—

The cabby said as I handed him some bills:
“return your wood to the jungle—
candles will burn all year.”

To live without the one you love
an empty dream never known
true happiness except as such youth

watching snow at window
listening to old music through morning.
Riding down that deserted street

by evening in a lonely cab
     past a blighted theatre
oh god yes, I missed the chance of my life

     when I gasped, when I got up and
        rushed out the room
          away from you.

In the end,

I was like others.

A person.

Sometimes embarrassed,

sometimes afraid.

When “Fire!” was shouted,

some ran toward it,

some away—

I neck-deep among them.

—2017

^{translated from the Japanese by Jeffrey Angles}

I am a boy, having never known love, 
Who has suddenly fallen from the summit  
Of frightening infancy into the darkness of a well 
Dark, watery hands choke my delicate neck 
Innumerable needles of cold push into me, 
Killing my heart, wet as a fish 
Inside, each organ swells like a flower 
As I move horizontally below the earth 
Along the surface of the water  
Eventually, from the green horn in my groin 
A sprout, unreliable and delicate, will grow 
Clawing up the heavy soil with thin hands 
One day, like a pallid face, 
Its tree will rustle under the painful light 
For I desire as much space inside me  
For light as space for shadow

死んだ少年

ぼくは　愛も知らず
怖ろしい幼年時代の頂きから　突然
井戸の暗みに落ちこんだ少年だ
くらい水の手が　ぼくのひよわなのどをしめ
つめたさの無数の雛が　押し入って来ては
ぼくの　魚のように濡れた心臓をあやめる
ぼくは　すべての内臓で　花のようにふくれ
地下水の表面を　水平にうごいていく
ぼくの股の青くさいつのからは　やがて
たよりない芽が生え　重苦しい土を
かぼそい手で　這いのぼっていくだろう 
青ざめた顔のような一本の樹が
痛い光の下にそよぐ日が来るだろう 
ぼくは　影の部分と同じほど
ぼくの中に　光の部分がほしいのだ