La Chocolatera
The tip of the palm
enters the back
of the bathroom, its wood
cut window, its smells
of platanos after playas,
its seaside breath stuck
in ergo sides—
enter la radio,
conmigo, contigo—
parts of us wanting
La Chocolatera,
the most western point
of the South American
continent;
how suddenly small
palms seem.
We face this curve,
a jogged Santa Fe,
Pacific gutter green
over white cunt crush.
Picture our time,
make me yours.
A hashtag of breathable
experience.
What it does:
make the domicile shower
stare-down, a liquor party
of Burt’s Bees.
Whisper with our neighbor
(we share that palm
tip in our baños),
too drop dreams,
too express
our military selves
by a military part,
the base of Chipipe
sequestered.
Too believe this scene—
locals and tourists
selfie up,
pat babies
soft or hard,
friend and fry
with different
languages, then—
a taxi ride, a passport show,
two adults back to baby.
The velocity
of our steam—
pores and a baby’s brush,
our occasional
still brushing skin—
covers our curling,
hyper smile, home to you,
to hug you,
like history never happened.
Namesake
for Santa Fe
If there were a place with a window
to all places, it would be Santa Fe.
Kept by the bluest blue, so blue it burns
the eyes who see it by simply, being, blue.
How big, how deep, how long, this blue,
how sassy its feeling, feeding, giving
of earth. Its purple cacti starring low,
loud pink bumping beige, brown
skin pricked. Green trees splatter by
trough, a low, loose, gravelly sand.
Those yellow bushes should come
by signage—“combustible”—if touched,
would turn mesh, remind the internality
and eternality of organs.
Were to light them, would engulf with flame.
Of a rock etched in green, she asked me,
did you take it? Is not the act of taking
felt cross-pueblo, cross-land belonged /
cured / tended / earthed / lentiled / tilled /
divvied / breathed / by Native Americans
backing 10,000 years?
Is not this land, never for plucking,
neither for plucking now?
Abuela
This mess can be handled, they tell us.
What we see: rustled drawers of
ducks and compasses, layers of cool leaky bones.
The winners loosen their acorn hats but tighten
their haunches
recklessly brawn.
What we see: the difference a break of skin
brakes, how a tome of pho is built.
What we see: old news as new news
as grandmother feeds us, contemplates
the tic on the tac-toe of life.
The mouths who mourn her once she goes,
that artillery in her arteries.
