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.

As a child I tossed
all my imaginary friends
out the window of a fast moving train
because I wanted to feel my fist
break open as I freed them,
as each of their bodies
whipped against the siding,
their insides: snow
dispersing into wind,
their little heads rolling
across the yellow plains.

Because I believed they would return.
But none have since.
Not even the ones I didn’t love.

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

with the shock of hospice behind her  
and her ashes scattered on her cherished Pacific.   
She’s flipped the hourglass and stopped it at 29,   
when her hair was still chestnut and waving  
to her waist. And because it’s November and nighttime  
she’s wearing one of those vintage wool coats,  
wide lapels, no buttons or belt, a blue nearly gray  
in the foggy noir light of the streetlamps.   
It’s cold enough she has to hold it tight   
against her body. Too cold for the emerald   
silk teddy, or her long tanned legs in b-ball shorts,  
ready for some serious one-on-one. I’m dying   
to stop my steep climb home, turn around and ask her   
if she’s really here, but Orpheus is in my ear,  
warning me not to make that old mistake.  
It’s about trust, I think. Keep moving  
through the gloom of a spinned myth:  
let those you’ve loved come back   
when they’re ready, when you’re ready,   
as if no one were lost to begin with.

Full-on, no bullshit, no irony, yes Taco Bell 
where I can almost always pull together the 
cash to get dinner, at my brokest 
scrounging up enough change  
for the pillowy warmth of a bean burrito,  
extra red sauce, meant to be eaten  
behind the steering wheel in a parking lot 
or while driving, the wrapper crumpled up  
and thrown on the passenger side floor, 
leftover napkins stashed in the glovebox.  
In high school we’d ditch seventh period  
and drive 10 miles down I-5 to the closest town  
big enough to have a Taco Bell,  
where we’d house as much food as we could 
pay for, lounging in the pinkpurplegreen vinyl  
or the metal swivel chairs we’d knock knees under,  
giving each other dares around fire sauce,  
hoarding packets of mild sauce to douse everything.  
And forever, my love to the Taco Bell employees,  
who took my order when I was drunk or high or crying,  
who listened and fed me without too much judgment  
through high school and college and my thirties,  
and a special love for the two who pushed my car  
through the drive-thru, once, when it broke down  
mid-order. I couldn’t afford a tow until payday.  
They let me leave it in the lot. 
This is how I know labor is entitled to all it creates,  
and that given a chance most of us are helpers, 
we want to help people and to be helped  
by people, amidst the absolute and delicious  
loveliness of ordinary things. 

The wind has come up  
and now there is a cloud behind the mountain.   
How many times did she tell me the story   
of my birth? The story ended when she’d say,  
and that was the happiest day of my life, and  
I’d feel a little sad because I’d had no child  
and would never have a day like hers. Sometimes,  
I can see the river bottom and its glitter  
of stones. Then a fish leaps in sunlight rippling  
the surface. Sometimes, I listen to the birds,  
our seers, the pileated always laughing. I’ve read  
the dead in dreams are never dead,  
and yes, it is their aliveness that is reassuring,  
their going on even as they leave us here. Just now  
the shadow of wings, and a far-off child’s voice  
shouting  Hey, Mom.

We’d lift gin from your mother’s cabinet  
and walk the hallways of Robert Asp Middle  
taking swigs in plain sight from a 20 oz  
Pepsi Clear, your gap tooth flashing  
at teachers we passed, your hands forgetting  
to pass the bottle, screwing and unscrewing  
the cap. After that I moved. We lost track.  
The news was six months old by the time  
I heard. When they don’t say what happened  
you know what happened. We used to catch  
rides from highschoolers out to the Red to jump  
the bridge. Water thick with clay. Red with clay.  
We kept close watch for underwater logs.  
Smoked Menthols. A 40-foot drop into swirls  
of currents. One time you stayed under  
and kicked downstream to trick me. Nervous,  
I stared at the surface for signs. No signs.  
I stumbled down the bank to dive in.  
The moment you were certain you had me  
the valley cracked with your laughter.

We were living in a blue room, somewhere near  
the coast. The trees were tall and green as sleeping men,  
bent against the wind. There were blackberries,  
apple farms, roaring waves of storms. Long December  
foghorn nights, the distant tinny ringing of a bell.  
We watched the ships go by, the seagulls flock  
and spread. We stayed up late and read Neruda 
in the dark, returning every nerve. So close it seemed  
the other person’s body was our own. Eyes for eyes,  
hands for hands, waiting for the other one to come.  
It wasn’t beauty but a lack of time. We saw the stars  
dissolve, the shifting range of blues against the peaks.  
Mountains in the distance. Black hills. Moon. There was  
a time, a period of days and nights before the end.  
We were living in a blue room, and we were happy.

To be saved by ideas: a fantasy I harbored.
In those days, there was always something
from which I needed saving. The past, its
expansive grammar, the way my grief was
a kind of deranged hope. I wanted a different
country, an old language to burst forth like
a hidden river. “Love is the cause of what
ails you,” wrote Lauren Berlant. Oof. Most likely,
no man is a refuge. But we can try all the same.

It is raining again. I’m struggling to remember
everything. Thank god: it is not too late to tell
a new story. Thank god: a sonnet is not that
deep of a chasm. Soon, I may climb out toward
the long expanse of our remaking.

on the subway lose control    of the rain     in her hair
by untying the tight pact of her bun

Help     is the new Amen     Amen, I’m drowning
in women who know what they want

you bread the tilapia   hands gloved in powder
while I tell you about the trip home
a woman spilled her groceries

on the platform eight oranges rolled across the dirty floor

I watched her recollect the planets
and knew something

small and bright as a lime    I bent down
Can I amen you?  and after being born
and born again I was born
again—

do you know what I mean, tilapia hands, let me
turn on the faucet    I know the joy

of Marie Curie sleeping with radium
women aren’t lovely   they’re love

we live in the bitchery of honesty
you, you     most especially
murdering lemon

over fish and singing
a dum-dum song about my ass
you, you     magentamouth transfixtress my magnet

those oranges constellated from yellow line to trash can
her fingernails
lurched fuchsia and turquoise
a cigarette parked behind her ear

cigarettes and fruit, what she put in her mouth
we gathered the flock of

at the top of those subway stairs
hugged in white light
a silver-haired woman

dressed to the nines and tens
pulled the leashes
of two saint bernards
mannish with drool
manifested their attention

and mine     a red kerchief’s splash and woo
at her throat
while down below
the stranger awarded me

an orange which I later peeled in one go while the snow ate my clothes like a man

the air smelled floral
like the earth

was ours     and bragging

He closed the door.
January bit through the walls.

The bed kept the warmth
seventeen minutes, then none.
No witness but the sheets.

I thought I stayed.

I inventoried the fridge.
The cream had turned.
I was late to the news of myself.

I didn’t starve.
I just never came back to the table.

Even hunger
has standards.

I left later,
quiet enough that air forgot me.
I went the way women go
who survive too long.

Afterward
I moved through rooms without arriving.
I lived like a light you forget to turn off.

The cream soured.
And I was elsewhere
long before I knew it

years from now they’ll ask us if it was still—the Quiet?
and yes we’ll say, we were stirred but it was still.
stirred?
we were stirred, we learned the shape of our own ears
the soft animism of mortality
we looked at each other’s skin, from a distance,
and felt we could break at anything at all
a piercing thought even
we thought we’d lose everything, we thought we already had

so we were stirred.
but it was quiet?
but it was distillery-quiet

and there was fear in our hearts but the love
it was decanted and poured freely
we still chatter about it like it was honey
and we learned how to be kinder to bees

we called our grandmothers and asked them for videos
and they sent us anything at all
grass
ovaltine
and we told our friends we loved them
and we looked at our uncles from across the street
screens
hands on our hearts, and they melted.

from?
stillness, fullness, sweetness, whatever we had.
we learned how big we were and how small
like those girls who broke your whole heart?
nodding
so you could see where all the pieces were
how capacious it was, anything can belong in there
anything at all
like those girls. but a whole earth.