Self-Portrait with Weeping Woman

I know why I fell hard for Hecuba—

shins skinned and lips split to blooming lupine

on her throat’s rough coat, hurled down the whole length

of disaster—I’m sure I’d grown to know

by then to slacken as a sail against

the current and squall of a woman’s woe.

What could I do but chorus my ruddered

howl to hers? When you’re a brown girl raised up

near the river, there’s always a woman

bereft and bank-wrecked, bloodied and bleating

her insistent lament. Ay Llorona—

every crossing is a tomb and a tune,

a wolf-wail and the moon that turns me to

scratch at the tracks of every mud-dirged girl.