is a field 

             as long as the butterflies say 

                                                                       it is a field 

 
with their flight

 
                                         it takes a long time 

to see

                         like light or sound or language

                                                                                      to arrive

and keep 
                         arriving

 
 
                                       we have more

than six sense dialect

                                                                      and i

am still

              adjusting to time

 
                              the distance and its permanence

 
i have found my shortcuts

 
                             and landmarks

                                                          to place

 
where i first took form

                                                                                           in the field

All the public places I’ve cried:
airports, beaches, parking lots—

so many—waiting rooms,
parks, train platforms,

benches. Whose loss
is shed? The bluish distillate

in Rilke’s saucerless cup
was watered down with tears

to be more bearable.
In this morning’s coffee

tears dissolved like comets
into darkness. If I need a good cry

I watch that astronaut singing
“Major Tom,” playing his guitar.

Astronaut tears are Jell-O.
Even this physics makes my heart

confetti. You’re too emotional,
you said, as my eyes irrigated

the flower beds. In India, Colombia,
Chile, Japan, and the Philippines,

you can still hire a professional
mourner. Crying in public

ought to be easier. Designated
trees or hilltops might help.

Or an hour of tears,
when we can howl in unison

and then return to our
diluteness. I mean dailiness.

Crying is inevitable
when headlines read

like requiems. When
Cihuacoatl prophesied

the conquest of Mexico
all she could do was cry.

LLORONA

Todos los lugares públicos donde he llorado:
aeropuertos, playas, parqueaderos

—tantos— salas de espera,
parques, andenes de trenes,

bancos. ¿La pérdida de quién
se derrama? El destilado azul

en la taza sin platillo de Rilke
fue diluido con lágrimas

para ser más soportable.
En el café de esta mañana

mis lágrimas se disolvieron como cometas
en la oscuridad. Si necesito un buen llanto

miro a ese astronauta cantando
“Mayor Tom,” tocando su guitarra.

Las lágrimas de astronauta son gelatina.
Esta física hace de mi corazón

confeti. Eres demasiado emocional,
dijiste, mientras mis ojos irrigaban

las flores. En la India, Colombia,
Chile, Japón y Filipinas,

todavía puedes contratar a una plañidera
profesional. Llorar en público

debería ser más fácil. Designados
árboles o cimas de colinas podrían ayudar.

O una hora de lágrimas,
cuando podemos aullar al unísono

y luego volver a nuestra
diligencia, a lo diario.

El llanto es inevitable
cuando los titulares suenan

como réquiems. Cuando
Cihuacoatl profetizó

la conquista de México
lo único que podía hacer era llorar.

1. Does your child have poor eye contact? Does he stare from unusual angles?

Yes. Like a dark bird from a high perch.
Yes. With acetylene torches lit somewhere in the distance.
With eyes wide as the Morpho’s iridescence.
Yes. Wild and hot like fixed stars.

2. Does your child not seem to listen when spoken to directly?

We call it dappled thoughts. He is constantly dappled—
here and not here. He is a thrush hidden in the sage.

3. Does your child have excessive fear of noises? Does he cover his ears frequently?

With wind there are moments—agonies. Like the time
we found him covering his ears in a cement sewer pipe
during a storm or when he fled into the street, shocked
by the vacuum. Often we hold him hard to keep the world
from flooding in. Often the world is sirens.

4. Does your child seem like he is in his own world?

We mourn him daily. And yet he guides me by the hand
through the threshold of his room as one guiding someone
just off a train, gently and lightly, avoiding the gap between
the platform and the track. The heat from his hand,
combustion-warm. Old stove in which we’ve heated this house.

5. Does he lack curiosity about his environment?

Because the color of the red door renders it mute.
Because the color of the die-cast car is an empty blue
and the sound of our voices could be any possible starling
we are not here. He is not here. And what of the place you reside
if you don't reside in it? Where then does your body blink?

6. Do his facial expressions not fit situations?

Nulled into a thick disquiet. Mouth agape.
Agate of the eye catches quick the inseam and
no blemish. No, no turning away and no smile.
The contraption shuts its winking gap.

7. Does he cry inappropriately? Does he laugh inappropriately?

A soothing so honed it does not surface
or salvage the daily losses. Which are also sharp
vibratos of hums along the jawbone—the music’s
arrowing shot into the thalamus. A strobe’s command
and call. A conspiratorial ache.

8. Does he have temper tantrums? Does he overreact when he doesn’t get his way?

He is a dark and stabled bull kicking at the chained gate.

9. Does he ignore pain? For example, when he bumps his head, does he react?

If it strikes you can’t rescind it. Juncture to
the brain. Sharp cortical hurt into which
leap charges—synapse to synapse, but then a what?
A question asks its question. A hurt insists and yet.

10. Does he dislike touch? Doesn’t want to be held?

There’s something about proximity. The dutiful
belonging of atoms and how we relate
the world through our skin. The exposed parts
of ourselves and how those pavilions are brushed by
a plum tree’s wicked thorns.

11. Does he hate crowds? Does he have difficulties in restaurants and supermarkets?

Everyday he’s praying through the meanwhiles.
The sequences of. Not just aflutter, but alone
he sits on the periphery. Ears beside his little body.

12. Is he inappropriately anxious? Scared?

To soothe, the sound of humming through teeth. And so
a symphony of fears. The ventricular outbursts pleat
the clouds. The sky is always exploding
and in that delirum, a curdled tone.

13. Does he speak the same to kids, adults, or objects?

Remind us of our asymmetries. Who is that again? And what
smile to let the darkness in? I see him speak to the man
in blue work clothes and the way his face yields to
the light. To the way moments like this explode.

14. Does he use language inappropriately? (Wrong words or phrases).

The world is a network of minds. Think
of the tongue and the fibers that make
its muscles. The branching capillary network
enmeshed. Alive and cooled with a song
that slides away. Tongue jammed in its stirrup
thinking of itself and the blood red
amanitas pushed out of the earth.

1.  
Now that I can, I am afraid to become a citizen.
I don’t want to become anything because I’m afraid of being seen. 

I am arriving, and departing, 
and later I will punish myself for looking over 
at the person sitting next to me on the plane, checking their screen 
and reading their email. For now there is no punishment.
Today I have realized everyone is just as boring as me. 
Everyone in TSA had enormous hands. 
I still refuse to travel with my green card.


2. 
It is my mother’s birthday and I bought her merchandise from a school 
I didn’t attend but only visited. She, too, understands the value of cultural capital.  

Today I am wounded. I like to say wounded instead of sad. Sadness is reserved
for days when I can actually make money from what I do. 
My mother raised me to make sure nothing I ever did I did for free. 


3.
When I land, Northern California is burning. 
We keep a suitcase near the door just in case.  
A man calls me three different names before giving up
and asks if my son has begun coughing yet.  
Beneath all that ash, no one seems bothered if you cry in public. 

Sitting around a circle of grateful alcoholics, some of whom will leave 
the room towards a clear portrait of their ruin,
which can either mean they will or will never return, 
a man tells me I have been selfish, and I admit I have. 
Sometimes I want every goddamn piece of the pie. 
A woman pulls aside her mask to smoke and says 
she’s going to look up what temperature 
teeth begin to melt, the implication being that if teeth melted, 
they won’t be able to identify her parents who are still missing in Paradise.

When I pray, I don’t know who I am talking to yet.
I take the eucharist in my mouth for the first time 
since changing religions and it is not as holy as I imagined. 


4. 
How easy. How effortless. This breath. 
I’m here. I’m here. I’m right here. I want to say.
I wish things were simple, like taking just one drink
and not another, like not burning in a fire, 
like letting things be good without being holy.
I wouldn’t have to pretend to try
to resume the bounty of this blossom.  

“EL Sal-va-doh-RE-AN Salva-doh-RAN, Salva-DOH-RÍ-an,”
los mui-muis, we don’t even know what
to call ourselves. How to eat
a pupusa: ¿fork & knife? or
¿open it up & treat it like a taco? but
then, we’re betraying our nationalistic (read:
anti-black, anti-indigenous) impulse
to not mix with anyone else. ¿& what’s
with jalapeños in the curtido,
cipotes? ¿With using spicy “salsa”
instead of salsa de tomate? There’s too many
“restaurantes,” one side of the menu: Mexican,
the other, platos típicos. Typically
I want to order the ensalada, but then
they bring me an actual salad.
I say: cóman miercoles, they
want to charge me extra for harina de arroz. Extra
por los nueagados. There’s
nowhere I’d rather be most
than in Abuelita’s kitchen, watching her
throw bay leaves, tomatoes, garlic, orégano
into the blender, then chicharrón,
helping her sell to everyone that knows
she made the best pupusas
from 1985 to 2004. By then,
Salvadoreños became “Hermanos Lejanos,”
we traded Colón for Washingtón. By then,
Los Hermanos Flores looked for new singers
every time they returned from Los Yunaited
to San Salvador. Stay, no se vayan,
es-tei, no sean dundos, was all
those Salvadoreños could say.
We didn’t listen & came here
only to be called Mexican or Puerto Rican,
depending on the coast. We had to fight
for our better horchata, not
the lazy whiter one with only rice. & when
we didn’t want to fight
we tried to blend, speak more “Mexican,”
more ira, more popote, more
no pos guao. ¡Nó, majes!
¡No se me hagan dundos,
ponganse trucha vos!
When anyone wants to call you: Mexican.
You can just say: Nó,
actually, andáte a la M—
racista cara de nacionalista.

He sits, silent, 
no longer mistaking the cable 
news for company—

and when he talks, he talks of childhood, 
remembering some slight or conundrum 
as if it is a score to be retailed

and settled after seventy-five years.

Rare, the sudden lucidity 
that acknowledges this thing
that has happened
to me… 

More often, he recounts 
his father’s cruelty
or a chance deprived 
to him, a Negro
                  under Jim Crow. 

Five minutes ago escapes him 
as he chases 1934, unaware

of the present beauty out the window,
the banks of windswept snow—

or his wife, humming in the kitchen, 
or the twilit battles in Korea, or me

when he remembers that I am his son.

This condition—with a name that implies 
the proprietary, 
possession, 
                           spiritual
and otherwise—

as if it owns him,
which it does.

^{after Franca Mancinelli}

All water flows toward loneliness.
Loneliness is a black eye, a gleaming pit.
We have yet to split loneliness like an atom.
Loneliness arrives on a leash of scorpions.
In my skull, loneliness opens like a parachute.
It’s illegal to chain loneliness to a fence.
Flickers tunnel through loneliness to build nests.
I sprinkle a spoon of sugar over loneliness.
In some languages, loneliness is imperfect.
Antlers crown the bald head of loneliness.
Like rough trade, loneliness won’t kiss you.
Loneliness is crouched in a tree, afraid of dirt.
In the dark, loneliness ripens too quickly.
Beneath the roof of loneliness, my blood drifts.

I once saw Jazell Barbie Royale
Do Whitney Houston so well
I got upset with myself for sneaking 
Past the cashier 
After having been patted down. Security frisks you 
For nothing. They don’t believe in trouble. They don’t 
Imagine a gun or a blade, though
Sometimes they make you walk all the way back 
To the car with the weed you didn’t tuck well.
No one’s at fault. That’s how they say it
Where I’m from. Everyone’s got a job. 
I should have paid. Our women
Need to perform for the tips they couldn’t earn
After the state shut down for good reason 
And too late. We lost so many friends. 
My buddy Janir swears 
He still can’t smell his lip balm. Our women need us 
To call them beautiful 
Because they are. They’ve done what they must
To prove it, and how often does any woman get
To hear the truth? Jazell is so pretty.
Whitney Houston is dead. No one wore a mask.
It wasn’t safe, so it wasn’t really free.
If you don’t watch me, I’ll get by you. I’ll take
What I’ve been missing. My mother says 
That’s not how she raised me. I spent 
A year and a half sure she’d die.
The women who lip sync for us could die.
People like to murder them, 
And almost everyone else wonders
If they should be dead. Who got dressed looking 
For safety today? Who got patted down?  My mother 
Says what we do is sin. But all we do 
Is party. Even when I’m broke, I can 
Entertain. You’re going to miss me some day. 
You’re going to forget the words to your favorite song. 
You’re going to miss me when I’m gone.