Take me back to homesteaders who pronounce poem & perm
The same & know neither take too well watered or weighted down.

To those who teach the difference between wahoos & no-hows
& haints & t’ain’t no body’s beast or business or property no mo’.

To endless back roads, verdant & muddy. To racing waist-deep
In fields of wildflowers & corn stalks as tall as your big brother’s crown

& Verily, I say, & because I say, so it is. To fields of blinding white &
Chiggers & bolls that burrow deep in soil richer & veined & reddened

By all those black, bruised palms’ blood. To never will I pick again. To
Melons & peanuts & as many hogs & heads of cattle as our pennies

& prayers can feed. To knowing when to slaughter & what
To keep. To knowing where to hide the blade, who not to tell. 

To Mrs. Mable’s snuff-mucked mouth & her darlin’ Ben, to
Mack & Nellie & they ol’ mule Sally’s slack back breaking wind.

To Sister Lola’s man’s astigmatism, Uncle Willis’ crossed legs
& arms belying memories of a rifle, his right hand unflinching

In salute, winning the Battle of the Bulge I never will. To Miss
Lou Mamie convulsing, then giving up the right for the wrong

Right there, finally, in the choir stand, where Grandpa Roy
& Grandma Noretha keep time at the Hammond & Console,

Ruby-throated tenor & contralto entwined across a space vast
As the two-room shanty where they will make the restless boy

Who will make me, whose hearts stopped ’fo’ I could lay on
They chests & listen. To unsteady as this fraught rhyme reaching,

Reaching, echoing the murmur they gifted him & me, they baby
Boygirl. Take me back to the original question, which enters

This room’s crooked lines long before you with your morning
Coffee or fresh blend of tinctures, teas or spirits: What must

I do to be saved from myself now? What you got to take away
This plague’s unyielding ache? I’m nobody’s savior, Nicodemus, but

Come here. Hear them. In my dreams, these & a few others await:
Always alive, hear them rocking a stain-glassed house of pews,

Blues creaking in sync, brows & arms aloft, hands caressing
Oaken divets on the quaking boards’ floors & collicky babies’

Backs in brokenhearted girls’ arms & laps. Let us kneel, faces flat,
Fingers flexed, nostrils becking Pine-Sol to cleanse every crevice

It can reach, backs arched, conjuring bolts of holy heat
No unnatural flesh, unmoved, can stand. Come on, Jesus

Allah Amma. Anyone Listening? Take us down, down into
These plantations’ mire, believing in ussin the only way beyond through

To ours. There, Thomas’ dubious gaze will mirror mine, help us
Cross in a calm time. Rest our thorny sides in its briar patch, thatch

A home from its scrapyards’ booty, undulate real proper like, loose
Our selves in this shifty baldachin’s ready sway. I’ll go, I cried all

Those years ago. Send me. But I’m so tired, all cried out, so take
Me back to this nowhere town, where we can lay our burdens down.

All my loved ones are gone

Those who inhabited my distant town

How I miss
A moment of a glance
An enigmatic smile
That contagious laugh
The hand gently placed on a hip
The nodding head
The moment of empathy
When I felt loved and accepted

My dead relatives

Pulses of life that
Explode in an instant
Then fade away
Twinkling, flickering
In the air of the times

I will join them one day
I will cross the veil
Between palm trees and flamboyanes
I’ll hug them if they want me to
Or will watch them from afar

Now their memory
—And sometimes a shadow passing by, a gentle touch, tiny sounds— 
Accompany me in the afternoons

It’s what I share with them

They left a trace in my days
An unfathomable beauty
A slight sadness

My dead relatives

Ineffable testimonies
Of the love that permeates
Existence

Mis familiares muertos

Se han ido todos mis muertos

Los que habitaban mi pueblo lejano

Cómo extraño
El segundo de una mirada
La sonrisa enigmática
Aquella risa contagiosa
La mano en la cadera
La cabeza que asiente
El instante de empatía
En que me sentí querida y aceptada

Mis familiares muertos

Pulsos de vida que
Estallan en un instante
Luego se desvanecen
Rutilantes, parpadeando
En el aire de los tiempos

A ellos me uniré algún día
Cruzaré el velo
Entre palmeras y flamboyanes
Los abrazaré, si quieren
O los contemplaré a distancia

Ahora su memoria
—Y a veces sus celajes, toques leves, ruiditos—
Me acompañan en las tardes

Es lo que comparto con ellos

Dejaron un rastro en mis días
Una belleza insondable
Una suave tristeza

Mis familiares muertos

Testimonios inefables
Del amor que permea
La existencia         

^{Isabela, Puerto Rico}

where am I
           ordinary explosión
                       de las sienes
hundred temples 
                       red cerebral
                       flamboyanes
           fuegotten
                       nunca 
           dissolvidar
ever fire 
           in caos
           dos pills each morning
           tres evening dose
           for decades traga
           have swallowed peor
           con bitter orgullo pill
           leve [tiracet] am I
mulch of skyline
where am I
where’s 
           wepa in 
           epi
           lepsi
           lexi
                       con
                       o ser
to know one
self a seagull 
gab iota
never crashing 
bodymind 
buildings
melt canopy
fever sun
           febrero’s chaos
           aches sin hache
                       hacha de fuego
waking hours
                       convulsión que soy
seizure I am
walking waves 
the express
way ordinary
           I of familia 
less song
canopy & cave
                       no cabe aquí
                       mi trino
                       mi gorjeo
try no more
to fight the twitch
you are not
                       tu receta
your prescribed
prescriptive self
receipt of pharmaceuticals
you depend on
                       para sobrevivir
                       para sobrevolar
planing over 
neural sea
                       mar neural
gorge of light

                       coro (escuchando a Villano Antillano):

seagull squawk y guaraguaos
canopy of burning green
           familia I’ve never seen
memory’s old wooden house
           seizure teoría del caos
           red walking ordinary 
expressway February
aura’s song is where the sun is
           fever dream of flamboyanes
knows no cure, no adversary