Poem-a-Day

How many and who folded 
and how long was the walk back?

Their presence defined by their labor,
bedclothes draped over the maguey—

colorless, near dry. By erasure,

like my craving for narrative
within the purely imagistic:

he spilled the wine but kept his erection
while she ran to the kitchen for seltzer, 

salt. What’s the gender of water?

Feminine though, for fluidity, 
it takes the masculine article.

Women retain and fetch it, strained 
under its weight for miles for centuries.

Fleshy and slow to grow, the maguey 

connotes strength, resourcefulness,
tolerates what I can’t: desert, neglect, fire. 

Inside the mosquito net, I slept badly, 
replaying a petty argument.

The empty vacation days stretching 

wider through the partly cloudy solstice, 
the strawberry moon less red than I’d wanted. 

My mother labored three times,
pushed out my brother, me, my other brother, 

his image, then hers, then his again

before her tubal ligation. My father, a surgeon, 
lived on the labor and delivery floor—

but I’m writing about weather, aperture,
absence, who has withstood the worst.