As if the lid stayed put on the marmalade.
As if you could get the last sip of champagne
out of the bottom of the fluted glass.
As if we weren’t all dying, as if we all weren’t
going to die some time, as if we knew for certain
when, or how. As if the baseball scores made sense
to the toddler. As if the dance steps mattered, or there’s a point
where they don’t. For instance wheelchair. Heart flutter.
Oxygen bottle mounted on the septuagenarian's back
at the state ballroom competitions—that’s Manny,
still pumping the mambo with his delicious slip
of an instructor, hip hip hooray. Mambo, for instance,
if done right, gives you a chance to rest: one beat in four.
One chance in four, one chance in ten, a hundred, as if
we could understand what that means. Hooray. Keep
pumping. As if you could keep the lid on a secret
once the symptoms start to make sense. A second
instance, a respite. A third. Always that hope.
If we could just scrape that last little bit
out, if only it wouldn’t bottom out
before they can decode the message
sent to the cells. Of course it matters when, even though
(because?) we live in mystery. For instance
Beauty. Love. Honor. As if we didn’t like
secrets. Point where it hurts. Of course we’ll tell.

What I’ve written for you, I have always written
in English, my language of silent vowel endings
never translated into your language of silent h’s.
               Lo que he escrito para ti, siempre lo he escrito
               en inglés, en mi lengua llena de vocales mudas
               nunca traducidas a tu idioma de haches mudas.
I’ve transcribed all your old letters into poems
that reconcile your exile from Cuba, but always
in English. I’ve given you back the guajiro roads
you left behind, stretched them into sentences
punctuated with palms, but only in English.
               He transcrito todas tus cartas viejas en poemas
               que reconcilian tu exilio de Cuba, pero siempre
               en inglés. Te he devuelto los caminos guajiros
               que dejastes atrás, transformados en oraciones
               puntuadas por palmas, pero solamente en inglés.
I have recreated the pueblecito you had to forget,
forced your green mountains up again, grown
valleys of sugarcane, stars for you in English.
               He reconstruido el pueblecito que tuvistes que olvidar,
               he levantado de nuevo tus montañas verdes, cultivado
               la caña, las estrellas de tus valles, para ti, en inglés.
In English I have told you how I love you cutting
gladiolas, crushing ajo, setting cups of dulce de leche
on the counter to cool, or hanging up the laundry
at night under our suburban moon. In English,
               En inglés te he dicho cómo te amo cuando cortas
               gladiolas, machacas ajo, enfrías tacitas de dulce de leche
               encima del mostrador, o cuando tiendes la ropa
               de noche bajo nuestra luna en suburbia. En inglés
I have imagined you surviving by transforming
yards of taffeta into dresses you never wear,
keeping Papá’s photo hinged in your mirror,
and leaving the porch light on, all night long.
               He imaginado como sobrevives transformando
               yardas de tafetán en vestidos que nunca estrenas,
               la foto de papá que guardas en el espejo de tu cómoda,
               la luz del portal que dejas encendida, toda la noche.
               Te he captado en inglés en la mesa de la cocina
               esperando que cuele el café, que hierva la leche
               y que tu vida acostumbre a tu vida. En inglés
               has aprendido a adorer tus pérdidas igual que yo.
I have captured you in English at the kitchen table
waiting for the café to brew, the milk to froth,
and your life to adjust to your life. In English
you’ve learned to adore your losses the way I do.

for Ben Estes

So taste
as day
rearranges the red
and orange flowers
from tongue to tongue
like losing the cymbal's 
clang for all its glints
we crept behind the moon
which always insists on sleeping over 
barely a belly for a mouth
an hour past the movie
we were still filming 
the way food fills
each curving lapse
between your teeth
or song
in sheets
against the windshield
no one believes
air is the enemy
so don't be afraid
to breathe all this speech
someone already died to say
the moon is on the couch
so we climb onto the roof
where our bellies swell open
to slosh and go flowers
red and orange flowers
hairy and pink-stemmed
like champagne flutes
we always overuse
everything that 
happens happens
wrong if not
by tongue's might
in the little time
left before sun drives
all the workers into work
all the workers into work

What was is . . . since 1930;
the boys in my old gang
are senior partners.  They start up
bald like baby birds
to embrace retirement.

At the altar of surrender,
I met you
in the hour of credulity.
How your misfortune came out clearly
to us at twenty.

At the gingerbread casino,
how innocent the nights we made it
on our Vesuvio martinis
with no vermouth but vodka
to sweeten the dry gin—

the lash across my face
that night we adored . . .
soon every night and all,
when your sweet, amorous 
repetition changed.

Fertility is not to the forward,
or beauty to the precipitous—
things gone wrong
clothe summer
with gold leaf.

Sometimes
I catch my mind
circling for you with glazed eye—
my lost love hunting
your lost face.

Summer to summer,
the poplars sere
in the glare—
it's a town for the young,
they break themselves against the surf.

No dog knows my smell.

We moved into a house with 6 rooms: the Bedroom,
the Map Room, the Vegas Room, Cities
in the Flood Plains, the West, & the Room Which Contains All
of Mexico.  We honeymooned in the Vegas Room where
lounge acts wasted our precious time.  Then there was the junta's
high command, sick dogs of the Map Room, heel-
prints everywhere, pushing model armies into the unfurnished
West.  At night: stories of their abandoned homes in the Cities
in the Flood Plains, how they had loved each other
mercilessly, in rusting cars, until the drive-in went under.
From the Bedroom we called the decorator & demanded
a figurehead... the one true diva to be had
in All of Mexico: Maria Felix [star of The Devourer, star
of The Lady General].  Nightly in Vegas, "It's Not Unusual"
or the Sex Pistols medley.  Nothing ever comes back
from the West, it's a one-way door, a one-shot deal,--
the one room we never slept in together.  My wife
wants to rename it The Ugly Truth.  I love my wife for her
wonderful, light, creamy, highly reflective skin;
if there's an illumination from the submerged Cities,
that's her.  She suspects me of certain acts involving Maria Felix,
the gambling debts mount...but when she sends the junta off to Bed
we rendezvous in the Map Room & sprawl across the New World
with our heads to the West. I sing her romantic melodies from the Room
Which Contains All of Mexico, tunes which keep arriving
like heaven, in waves of raw data, & though I wrote
none of the songs myself & can't pronounce them, these are my
    greatest hits

Since the day the bell was cast

I have sat in the bishop’s carved chair and waited my turn

with my feet crossed at the ankles, and the leather of my huaraches

cutting into the hide of my foot.

From where I was sitting I watched the light being drawn off

the magnolias in the Plaza de Armas

while the voices of the others choired an evening.

I have risen to the lectern when the eyes of the host summoned.

I faced the great open doors as the faces of strangers
acknowledged their own losses.

I saw the white trousers of the vendor flapping in the dust

his body engulfed in balloons,

the children selling Chiclets dispersed;

the shoe shine boy putting away his brushes, the sum of his inheritance.

I have read what was written there, said, Gracias, and sat down again.

I have climbed the pyramidal steps and felt winded and humbled.

I have stood small and borracha and been glad
of not being thrown down the barranca alongside the pariah consul
in the celebrated book.

In every sense have I felt lonelier than a clod of clay, a whip, a bolsa,
a skull of chocolate.

I have been lured my host’s pellucid face and the blue salvia
where the rooster is buried.

Though I have worn the medal of the old town with forlorn pleasure
I say unto you:

     Comrades, be not in mourning for your being

     To express happiness and expel scorpions is the best job on earth.