must look so small, undetectable even,
from the vantage point where I imagine 

a god could see me, and I do sometimes  
imagine a god like a sentient star

out beyond where our instruments 
could find it, then I talk myself 

out of the image. Out of the concept
entirely. From a distance, I know 

I’m an ant tunneling my way 
through sand between plastic panels, 

watched—or not—from outside. 
My puny movements on this planet, 

all the things I’ve done or built 
with my own body or mind, seem 

like nothing at all. But from the inside 
this life feels enormous, unlimited 

by the self—by selfness—
vaster even than the sparkling 

dark it can’t be seen from.

^{translated from the Spanish by Carina del Valle Schorske}

Uncollected day.
I haven’t played my own role,
the others have abandoned theirs.
I’ve been spitting nonsense, like:
make me pleased as a potato,
face blunt, stupid milk circulating.

Later I changed my mind
while the numbered day 
stripped down to nothing. 
I wished to be a cherry, the Spanish kind: 
oyster of blood and surging sugar.

Then I wished to be a mango,
a local mango hung from Ursa Major,
pure acrobatic speculation, nocturnal shadow, 
the coqui tethered to her song. 

I’ve been so many things in three minutes:
vain imaginings, windy games, and here I am,
here we are, spoiling for a fight with life, the day 
already dead, still uncollected, thirty idle hands 
opening this book, novena, page nine. 
 

Versos de cada día 57

Día inédito.
No he sido yo mi propio personaje
ni ellos los suyos.
Me he pasado ensartando disparates,
diciendo: quisiera ser feliz como la papa,
tener la cara roma y una circulación
de leche tonta.

Luego cambié de idea
mientras el día, hecho de tiempo
y números se andaba desnudando.
Quise ser la cereza, la cereza española:
ostión de sangre y azúcar ascendente.

Pero un rato después quise ser mangó…
un mangó de mi tierra y colgar de la Osa Mayor;
pura especulación volatinística,
en la nocturna sombra del coquí,
vinculada a su canto. 

He sido tantas cosas
desde hace tres minutos:
pura especulación imaginaria, vano
juego de viento.
Y aquí estoy y aquí estamos ellos y yo
y la vida rompiendo sus navajas
en este día ya muerto y aún inédito
entre las treinta manos que abre el ocio
en la novena página de un libro. 
 

I wasn’t, by any means, a natural.
Was not one of those wow-hounds
born jaw-dropped. I was tough in the husk.
Went years untouched by rain. Took shelter
seriously, even and often especially
in good weather, my tears like teenagers
hiding under the hoods of my eyes,
so committed they were to never falling
for the joke of astonishment.

When I was told there were seven
wonders of the world, I trusted the math,
believed I had seen none of them.
Of course beauty hunted me.
It hunts everyone. But I outran it, hid
in worry, regret, the promise of an afterlife
or a week’s end.

Then one day, in a red velvet theater
in New Orleans, I watched Maya Angelou
walk on stage. Seventeen slow steps to the mic.
She took a breath before speaking,
and I could hear god being born in that breath.
My every pore reached out like a hand
pointing to the first unsinkable lotus
in the bayou of the universe.
I’d never felt anything like it.
Searched the encyclopedia
for the feeling’s name when I got home:

                        “Goosebumps.”

Afterwards, I thought—I can do this.
Started training morning to night,
tore the caution tape off my life
and let everything touch it.

Allen Iverson on the television
in his first season with the Sixers,
crossover sharp as a V of sparrows
Flying through the paint like Michelangelo’s brush:
272 goosebumps.

My baby sister, sober for the first time
in thirteen years, calling to tell me
she just noticed our mother’s eyes are green:
505 goosebumps.

One day, my friend scored tickets
to a Prince concert. Tiny venue.
I was right behind the sound booth.
Prince’s entire band that evening—women.
At the end of the show the person
turned around and whispered,  He didn’t play
one song on his setlist the whole night.

I live on stages. I know what it is
to scratch a plan, but not the whole trip
and still arrive to your destination
two hundred years before your time:
421 (artist formerly known as) goosebumps.

But that’s just the fancy stuff.
Some of them came from simple facts—
It rains diamonds on Jupiter.
Blood donors in Sweden receive a thank you
message when their blood is used.

One night in Michigan, my friend,
still undiagnosed, could not uncurl
her fingers to strum her guitar,
so she sang the chords instead.
It was the first time in my life I’d seen pain
become an instrument:
10 dozen goosebumps
for each and every note plucked up from
the string section of her refusal to silence
her dream.

After that, nothing in the world was gray.
Even the movie of my past was released
in color. The oldest man in my hometown
could not get to the door to listen
to our carols so we went inside and sang
at his bedside instead. Twenty-four boots
on the front step catching snowflakes
with their tongues: 776 goosebumps.

At one point everything started doing it:
A sincere apology, an enemy’s love poem.
The moon rising over the continental divide.
My love and I thought it was a car
driving off a cliff, and suddenly
nothing in the world was dying.
You ever felt that? A split second
when nothing in the world is dying?
888 goosebumps, and the next day
I sharpened a tiny ax
so I could split the seconds myself.
Too much lives in a moment
to not feed it to the fire in the heart, slow.

A Missoula treehouse filled with candlelight.
The octopus documentary.
The biggest dog in the shelter
hiding behind a teacup chihuahua,
and the woman who came to adopt a cat
taking all three of them home.

Me, at home, two months into chemotherapy
watching all of my eyelashes fall onto my cheekbones
and realizing that was 400 wishes
I wouldn’t have made otherwise.

There is no escaping
the magic now. Beauty caught me
and never let me go.
And the thing about the world record
is—if someone breaks it after me,
and they will break it after me,
I will love that so much
that without even trying,
I’ll break it again.

You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen—
You are a hundred wild centuries

And fifteen, bringing with you
In every breath and in every step

Everyone who has come before you,
All the yous that you have been,

The mothers of your mother,
The fathers of your father.

If someone in your family tree was trouble,
A hundred were not:

The bad do not win—not finally,
No matter how loud they are.

We simply would not be here
If that were so.

You are made, fundamentally, from the good.
With this knowledge, you never march alone.

You are the breaking news of the century.
You are the good who has come forward

Through it all, even if so many days
Feel otherwise.  But think:

When you as a child learned to speak,
It’s not that you didn’t know words—

It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.

From those centuries we human beings bring with us
The simple solutions and songs,

The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies
All in service to a simple idea:

That we can make a house called tomorrow.
What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day,

Is ourselves.  And that’s all we need
To start.  That’s everything we require to keep going. 

Look back only for as long as you must,
Then go forward into the history you will make.

Be good, then better.  Write books.  Cure disease.
Make us proud.  Make yourself proud.

And those who came before you?  When you hear thunder,
Hear it as their applause.

The cog in the eye turns
Until there is nothing left
To discern. I sip tea

Steeped in a kind of lust—

If I say I am, you are, he/she/it is . . .
We don’t have to agree
But it requires, to mean,

A common rubric.

The clock reads the time
Because we set it. I mean,
How else? Who is anyone

Who is anyone?

The grass edges outline the grave:
Get to living!