ALSO BY SANDRA CISNEROS

FICTION

Martita, I Remember You / Martita, te recuerdo Have You Seen Marie?

Caramelo

Woman Hollering Creek

The House on Mango Street

Hairs / Pelitos

Vintage Cisneros

Bravo, Bruno

Puro Amor

POETRY

Loose Woman

My Wicked Wicked Ways

Bad Boys

MEMOIR / ESSAYS

A House of My Own

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2022 by Sandra Cisneros

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Some poems originally appeared in the following publications: “Cielo sin sombrero / Sky Without a Hat,” “Creed,” and “Instructions for My Funeral” in Black Renaissance Noire; “My Mother and Sex”

and “Remedy for Social Overexposure” in North American Review; “Smith’s Supermarket, Taos, New Mexico, at the Fifteen Items or Less Checkout Line” and “In My Little Museum of Erotica” in Ploughshares; “It Occurs to Me I Am the Creative/Destructive Goddess Coatlicue” in The Massachusetts Review; “Jarcería Shop” in Nepantla Familias; “I Should Like to Fall in Love with a Burro Named Saturnino” and “This in the News Unmentioned” in Kenyon Review; “You Better Not Put Me in a Poem,” “A Boy with a Machine Gun Waves to Me,” and “Exploding Cigar of Love” in Freeman’s; “Canto for Women of a Certain Llanto,” “El Hombre,” and “God Breaks the Heart Again and Again” in Huizache; “Día de los Muertos” in the Los Angeles Times; “Buen Árbol / A Good Tree”

in Conjunctions; “Our Father, Big Chief in Heaven” and “Never Mention to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas” in The Paris Review. “El Hombre” was commissioned by the Dallas Museum of Art.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: Cisneros, Sandra, author.

Title: Woman without shame: poems / Sandra Cisneros.

Description: First Edition. | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022. | Identifiers: LCCN 2021048969 (print) |

LCCN 2021048970 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593534823 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593534830 (ebook) Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS3553.I78 W67 2022 (print) | LCC PS3553.I78 (ebook) | DDC 811/.54—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048969

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048970

Cover photograph: La nopala (detail) by Flor Garduño Cover design by Emily Mahon

a_prh_6.0_140874742_c0_r0

for Norma Alarcón, poetry ally

CONTENTS

Mujer sin vergüenza

Tea Dance, Provincetown, 1982

Creed

At Fifty I Am Startled to Find I Am in My Splendor

Remedy for Social Overexposure

Never Mention to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas

K-Mart, San Antonio, Texas, 1986

Smith’s Supermarket, Taos, New Mexico, at the Fifteen-Items-or-Less

Checkout Line

Noche, La Casa Magdalena, Lamy, New Mexico

After a Quote from My Father

Wasps in the Buddha Bell

Calendar in the Season of the Pandemic

In Case of Emergency

Instructions for My Funeral

It Occurs to Me I Am the Creative/Destructive Goddess Coatlicue

Cielo sin sombrero

Cielo con sombrero / Sky Wearing a Hat

Jarcería Shop

El Jardin, End of Day

I Should Like to Fall in Love with a Burro Named Saturnino

Figs

Neither Señorita nor Señora

Our Father, Big Chief in Heaven

This in the News Unmentioned

El Hombre

Adelina Cerritos

Te A—

A Boy with a Machine Gun Waves to Me

Tepoztlán

Señor Martín

Swallows, Guanajuato Airport

Cielo sin sombrero / Sky Without a Hat

Police Blotter, May 5th, 2013, San Miguel de Allende

Quiero ser maguey en mi próxima vida / I Want to Be a Maguey in My Next

Life

Cantos y llantos

Back Then or Even Now

Canto for Women of a Certain Llanto

Washing My Rebozo by Hand

Having Recently Escaped from the Maws of a Deathly Life, I Am Ready to

Begin the Year Anew

Four Poems on Aging

Making Love After Celibacy

Lullaby

Instructions for Vigiling the Dying

Exploding Cigar of Love

God Breaks the Heart Again and Again Until It Stays Open

Mrs. Gandhi

Poem Written at Midnight

Year of My Near Death

Letter to Pat Little Dog After Losing Her Son

Día de los Muertos

Buen árbol / A Good Tree

Cisneros sin censura

Mount Everest

Variations in White

In My Little Museum of Erotica

My Mother and Sex

Stepping on Shit

Naranja completa

You Better Not Put Me in a Poem

Woman Seeks Her Own Company

Pilón

When in Doubt

Acknowledgments

Mujer

sin

vergüenza

Tea Dance, Provincetown, 1982

At the boy bar, no

one

danced with me.

I danced with

every

one.

The entire

room.

Every song.

That’s what was so

great

about the boy bars

then.

The room vibrated.

Shook.

Convulsed.

In one

collective

zoological

frenzy.

Truthfully,

I was the

only woman

there.

Who cared?

At the Boatslip,

I was welcomed.

The girl bar

down the street?

Pfft!

Dull as Brillo.

But the tea dances shimmied,

miraculous as mercury.

Acrid stink of sweat and

chlorine tang of semen.

Slippery male energy.

Something akin to

watching horses fighting.

Something exciting.

My lover,

the final summer he was bi,

introduced me to the teas.

Often hovered out of sight,

distracted by poolside

beauties, while I danced

content/innocent

with the room of men.

He was a skittish kite, that one.

Kites swerve and swoop and whoop.

Only a matter of time, I knew.

Apropos, I called him

“my little piece of string.”

And that’s what kites

leave you with in the end.

There was an expiration date

to summer. Understood.

That season,

I was experimenting to be

the woman I wanted to be.

Taught myself to sun

topless at the gay beach,

where sunbathers

shouted “ranger,”

a relayed warning

announcing authority,

en route on horseback,

coming to inspect

if we were clothed.

Else fined. Fifty

dollars sans bottom.

One hundred, topless.

Fifty a tit, I joked.

It was easy to be half naked

at a gay beach. Men

didn’t bother to look.

I was in training to be

a woman without shame.

Not a shameless woman,

una sinvergüenza, but

una sin vergüenza

glorious in her skin.

Flesh akin to pride.

I shed that summer

not only bikini top but

guilt-driven Eve and

self-immolating Fatima.

Was practicing for

my Minoan days ahead.

Medusa hair and breasts

spectacular as Nike of Samothrace

welcoming the salty wind.

Yes, I was a lovely thing then.

I can say this with impunity.

At twenty-eight, she was a woman

unrelated to me. I could

tell stories. Have so many to tell

and none to tell them to

except the page.

My faithful confessor.

Lover and I feuded

one night when he

wouldn’t come home with me.

His secret—herpes.

Laughable in retrospect,

considering the Plague

was already decimating dances

across the globe.

But that was before

we knew it as the Plague.

We were all on the run in ’82.

Jumping to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,”

the summer’s theme song.

Beat thumping in our blood.

Drinks sweeter than bodies

convulsing on the floor.

Creed

I believe I am God.

And you are too.

And each and everyone.

But only for a little.

I believe God is

Love, and love is God.

And although some

Doubt God’s existence,

No one doubts the existence of love,

Even and especially those who have

Never met love.

I believe we are

Capable of atrocities beyond

Imagination and equally

Capable of extraordinary

God-acts as well.

I believe

There is enough misery

In the world, but also

Humanity—just a bit

More, I believe.

I believe in the power

Of a thought, a word,

To change the world.

I believe there is no greater

Sorrow than that of a mother

Who has lost her child.

I believe in las madres,

Las madres de las madres,

Y la santísima madre,

La diosa Guadalupe.

Because the universe is large enough

To encompass contradictions,

I believe these same mothers sometimes

Create monsters— los machos.

I believe mothers and grandmothers

Are the solution to violence,

Not only in Mexico / the United States,

But across the globe.

I believe what the generals need now

Are the abuelita brigades armed with Chanclas to shame, swat, and spank

Los meros machos del mundo.

Amen.

At Fifty I Am Startled to Find I Am in My Splendor

These days I admit

I am wide as a tule tree.

My underwear protests.

And yet,

I like myself best

without clothes when

I can admire myself

as God made me, still

divine as a maja.

Wide as a fertility goddess,

though infertile. I am,

as they say,

in decline. Teeth

worn down, eyes burning

yellow. Of belly

bountiful and flesh

beneficent I am. I am

silvering in crags

of crotch and brow.

Amusing.

I am a spectator at my own sport.

I am Venetian, decaying splendidly.

Am magnificent beyond measure.

Lady Pompadour roses exploding before death. Not old.

Correction, aged.

Passé? I am but vintage.

I am a woman of a delightful season.

El Cantarito, little brown jug of la Lotería.

Solid, stout, bottom planted

firmly and without a doubt,

filled to the brim I am.

I said the brim.

Remedy for Social Overexposure Seek a pirul tree and sit

beneath immediately.

Remove from

ears and tongue,

words.

Fast from same.

Soak in a tub of seclusion.

Rinse face with wind.

In extreme cases, douse

oneself with sky. Then,

swab gently with clouds.

Dress in clean, pressed pajamas.

Preferably white.

Hold close to the heart,

chihuahuas. Kiss and

be kissed by same.

Consume a cool glass of night.

Read poetry that inspires poetry.

Write until temperament

returns to calm.

Place moonlight in a bowl.

Sleep beside and

dream of white flowers.

Never Mention to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas

That you made love

on an office desk

on the seventeenth floor

with a view of the Alamo.

Saw it upside down.

Your head dangling

off the edge of the desk.

But saw it right for once.

Shook from memory—

Bosnia. How neighbor

upon neighbor fired.

Grief in one century

bred in another ire.

Reason collapsed

like Stari Most, a bridge

of five hundred years.

What do you know

of tears?

What you choose

to remember—

Beware.

K-Mart, San Antonio, Texas, 1986

FOR RUBÉN

When I can take you to the K-Mart

on South Santa Rosa at sunset,

and say, Meet me over by the flip-flops,

I’ve got to get me some socks.

When I can toss in the shopping cart

my tampons next to your Tres Flores

hair oil, my microwave popcorn, your

pack of white tees, my San Martín

de Porres three-day candle.

When we have finished paying

and can sit in the parking lot

satisfied, you and I,

with nachos and an Icee.

Then we can marvel

at a thousand black wings

swooping against the downtown sky.

Urracas urracando in the trembling trees.

Smith’s Supermarket, Taos, New Mexico, at the Fifteen-Items-or-Less Checkout Line

The baby-faced cholo in front of me

gently drops a divider bar between

what’s his and mine.

On my side, a six-outlet surge

protector for my computer,

and a fireproof glass cup

for my Lux Perpetua candle,

a votive so powerful

it self-destructs.

On his,

a plastic bottle of store-brand vodka.

It’s noon, but somewhere

it’s happy hour.

Baseball cap bad-ass backwards.

Black leather from neck to knees.

One brow and ear stitched with silver.

And on his neck, “Rufina” in wispy

ink I would kiss if I could. Fool,

it takes one to know one.

I drive away wondering

if Rufina is helping him

drink his bottle of forget.

Or if it’s she who is regret.

I write till the dark descends.

My cell warm tonight.

Candles. Copal.

Outside my window,

mountain without a moon.

Buddha in lotus.

Silent and still.

By ten, hot bath, lavender salts.

Flannel buttoned to the neck.

Am certain Rufina is not

as happy as I am tonight,

in bed with my love,

a book.

Noche, La Casa Magdalena, Lamy, New Mexico

FOR SUSAN AND BERT

i.

All night,

wind rattles

at my door

like an over-

sexed lover

wanting in.

ii.

Yellow

flowers

in your

Guada-

lupe

nicho

remem-

ber when

they were

wild.

Tired,

they furl

themselves

to sleep.

iii.

A borracho

slings a beer

bottle against

the sky.

One billion

trillion

stars.

After a Quote from My Father FOR LEVI ROMERO

The floors are sticky

With golden leaves

The dogs and I track in

On the soles of our feet.

Winter clothes need

To be brought down.

Make the bed.

Comb hair.

Wash the body.

Sleep.

Too many to-do’s

Posted on

My nose.

Check bank balance.

Stop at vet.

Pick up spray

For fleas.

None say:

Look at the moon.

Write poetry.

Take you time, mija.

Take you time.

Wasps in the Buddha Bell

Must be deaf

or devout on

this A. A.

Milne–blustery day.

On this wind-like-a-

bugle Emily day.

Deaf or devout,

they neither

desert

their monastery

nor appear

enraged.

Bell gongs.

And they

pray.

Ommmmmm.

Ommmmmm.

Ommmmmm.

Calendar in the Season of the Pandemic the ants have

deserted

my shower

for the garden

at long last

spring

In Case of Emergency

Contact nearest

cloud. Begin by

calling Milky Way.

Summon:

pepper tree,

maguey,

donkey shit,

jacaranda shower,

river,

caliche,

scorpion,

hummingbird,

or pearl.

Will vouch

we are

kin.

Instructions for My Funeral *

For good measure,

smoke me with copal.

Shroud me in my raggedy rebozo.

No jewelry. Give to friends.

No coffin. Instead, petate.

Ignite to “Disco Inferno.”

Allow no Christian rituals

for this bitch, but, if

you like, you may invite

a homeless dog to sing,

or a witch woman to spit

orange water and chant

an Otomí prayer.

Send no ashes north

of the Río Bravo

on penalty of curse.

I belong here,

under Mexican maguey,

beneath a carved mesquite

bench that says Ni Modo.

Smoke a Havana.

Music, Fellini-esque.

Above all,

laugh.

And don’t

forget.

Spell

my name

with mezcal.

SKIP NOTES

*With acknowledgment to Javier Zamora and his poem of the same title, though we each wrote our poems at about the same time, perhaps at the same moment, without having read one another’s. Saint Coincidence, as Joy Harjo would say.

It Occurs to Me I Am the Creative/

Destructive Goddess Coatlicue

I deserve stones.

Better leave me the hell alone.

I am besieged.

I cannot feed you.

You may not souvenir my bones,

knock on my door, camp, come in,

telephone, take my polaroid. I’m paranoid,

I tell you. Lárguense. Scram.

Go home.

I am anomaly. Rare she who

can’t stand kids and can’t stand you.

No excellent Cordelia cordiality have I.

No coffee served in tidy cups.

No groceries in the house.

I sleep to excess,

smoke cigars,

drink. Am at my best

wandering undressed,

my fingernails dirty,

my hair a mess.

Terribly

sorry, Madame isn’t

feeling well today.

Must

Greta Garbo.

Pull an Emily:

“The soul selects her own society…”

Roil like Rhys’s Sargasso Sea.

Abiquiu à la O’Keeffe.

Throw a Maria Callas.

Shut myself like a shoe.

Christ

almighty. Stand

back. Warning.

Honey,

this means

you.

Cielo

sin

sombrero

Cielo con sombrero

El cielo amaneció

con su propio sombrero

hecho de lana

sucia de borrego.

Un sombrero tan ancho

que deja la tierra con sombras

teñida de añil y lavanda.

Como el mar

visto desde una isla

de cara a tierra firme.

Como los trastes de peltre

de los campesinos

que comen sin cuchara.

Sky Wearing a Hat

Sky arose

with a hat all its own

made from dirty

sheep-wool.

A hat wide

enough to dye the earth

indigo and lavender with shade.

Like sea

seen from an island

facing land.

Like the pewter dishes

of country folk

who eat without spoons.

Jarcería Shop*

A breakfast tray please. For my terrace.

In the morning I invite the bees

To raisin bread with lavender honey.

Don’t worry, there’s always

Enough for everybody.

I’ll take a few of those carrizo

Baskets, strong enough for a woman

To haul a kilo of fresh oranges

From the Ignacio Ramírez market.

As if. I usually send Calixto,

The handyman.

Add a palm fan.

And an ocote stick or two.

For the fire I’ll never ignite.

Solo de adorno, of course.

To amuse spirit ancestors!

Can you bring down

That papier-mâché doll?

Dressed in her best underwear.

I had one just like it as a girl.

No, I don’t have kids.

A comal would be nice

To reheat my evening tamal.

Only a comal gives it That smoky flavor.

I don’t know how

To make tamales.

Why bother when

You can buy them

From the nuns.

A molcajete? Maybe.

Would make a cool bird

Bath for my yard.

Ay, and ixtle—

Maguey fibers

Hairy and white as

The grandfather’s chest—

To strop the skin raw in the shower.

My outdoor sink,

With ribs like a hungry dog’s,

Could use a step-stool stone

That dances un danzón,

And an escobeta scrub brush

Cinched tight at the waist

Like a ballerina.

Please deliver a fresh petate

With its palm tree scent

For my bedroom floor.

In the old days they were

My ancestors’ coffins.

And that ball of mecate string.

Might as well.

Plus a lidded straw basket

To store plastic market bags

The colors of the Mexican

Tianguis—

Sky turquoise,

Geranium coral,

Jacaranda, amethyst,

Tender green of

Fresh nopal paddles.

A cotton hammock

Wide as a market woman,

So while I sleep

The pepper tree can bless me.

Six carrizo poles

To hang the new curtains

Made from coyuchi cotton.

I came for a cage

For my onyx parrot—

A goodbye gift from my agent

Attached with a warning.

Don’t move south.

Los abuelos,

Who couldn’t read, fled

North during the revolution,

With only what

They could carry in un rebozo.

And here I am at fifty-eight

Migrating in the opposite direction

With a truck hauling my library.

I live al revés, upside down.

Always have.

Who called me here? Spirits maybe.

A century later. To die at home for them

Since they couldn’t.

And for my cobbled courtyard,

Your best branch broom

With a fine shh-shh,

Like the workers who sweep up

Saturday night on Sunday

Morning in el Jardín .

And, a bucket.

To fill with suds.

For the simple glory of scrubbing

Mexican porch tiles

In my bare brown feet.

When I feel like it.

On the housekeeper’s day off.

To set the grandmothers

Grinding their gravestone teeth.

SKIP NOTES

*This from the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española ( The Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy):

jarcería

f. Méx. Shop where objects made from vegetable fibers are sold. An archaic word, hardly in use anymore.

El Jardín, End of Day

To lose a kilo I walk

round and round el Jardín.

A monk hunkered in grief

is praying, I think.

Till I reel past his park bench

and note his book of hours.

His iPhone.

Under los portales,

a Mexican boy kisses

a boney gringuita.

No doubt he sees her

with Mexican eyes.

Bellísima

because she’s blond.

But los norteamericanos

see her with American eyes.

Nothing to write home about.

I imagine she sees him

with turista eyes.

Aztec beautiful.

But mexicanos

see him as feo

because he’s indio.

Night hovers.

Tourists lick ice cream cones

before setting out to dinner.

Kids in a sugar fury bounce

inflatable rockets on

church flagstones.

Beer bottles belch open.

Twilight sticky with the fried

scent of burgers and tacos.

Tethered to owners,

little dogs sniff concrete.

The cathedral an apricot hue,

sunburnt as los extranjeros.

Flocks of mariachi descend

itchy for work.

Balloon seller fidgets,

adjusts his yoke of

balloons and blow-up toys.

Shoulder aches.

Even air must weigh something.

While the sweets vendor

floats across the plaza

with a tree of cotton candy

the same colors as clouds.

I Should Like to Fall in Love with a Burro Named Saturnino

I should like to fall in love

with a burro named Saturnino

and sleep murmuring

that name as lullaby.

Warm my bed

with a xoloitzcuintli

the color of blue corn,

and will myself to be reborn

sunflower, ever

faithful to the sun.

I should like to learn to love

with the monogamous

passion of the parrot

and the foolish

valor of the chihuahua.

I should love to dedicate

my morning glory years

to the inspirational ants, who

peacefully and, without remorse

or humor, successfully evict me

from my shower every winter,

lessons in nonviolent persuasion.

I have much to learn from

the sentinel maguey about

fortitude, resilience, patience

in this season of los santos

inocentes de la política.

And day by day I am a student

of the morning sky.

And night by night I memorize

the sermon of the guru moon.

Next to my door

there is an ixtle rope

attached to a bronze bell

announcing visitors.

It does not ring when dawn arrives

with her furious scent of bolillos,

orange peels, and doorways

flushing buckets of Fabuloso

across wet stone.

Every day the same as the one before.

And never as the one before. Each moment

wrapped in newsprint and twine

and delivered always on time.

Figs

FOR DR. BRUNO CEOLIN

Some words

trip me

in my second tongue.

I say

pepino—cucumber

when I mean

pimienta—pepper.

Confuse

ginebra—gin,

when I mean

ginger— jengibre.

And when

the acupuncturist

tells me—

El hígado enamorado

quiere decir

el cuerpo está sano.

The liver in love

means the body is healthy—

I mistake

hígado—liver,

for fig— higo.

I prefer my translation.

All’s right with the world

when figs are in love.

Neither Señorita nor Señora

I didn’t love

those who did.

And did

those who didn’t.

Once

I almost proposed

in Paris.

Because it was Paris!

My heart

Fragonard’s shoe.

But he was afraid

of the Pont Neuf

and lingering

in the rain.

Another, too

busy saving worlds

to think of saving us,

I press between

the pages of my thighs.

Tender green

lost me to the darkness

under trees. And

lost himself to drink.

Worst,

the pest who could not love

at all, whom I loved best.

Shame!

I wanted as souvenir—

cue the violins please—

his child.

Even if disastrous

for the kid

and my career.

But that’s history.

More recently,

an exploding cigar.

Need I say more?

God saves fools

too foolish to

save themselves.

And now,

the Orizaba

years.

Here I have

no answer how

I got from then to now.

Except,

with gratitude

to all,

I bow.

Our Father, Big Chief in Heaven Our Father,

big chief in heaven,

I sent my assistant Calixto

to make an appointment

with Her Highness, la licenciada,

who has left for lunch before noon,

gone for the day, was fired, or fled,

who can tell; the third director

at this post in fifteen months.

Deliver us

from the bearded tenor

who schedules at said institution,

busy today trimming his whiskers—

“My will be done. Thy kingdom come…

back tomorrow.”

Forgive us

our trespasses, as

we forgive el notario,

who ought to be called el Notorious,

for having us wait three months

for his return call, so Calixto and wife

can finally sign the deed on their first

home, having given up on the

call from their own notario, even

slower than mine, and already

waiting weary.

Everything

on earth is done

with papeles, signatures, patience, and the arrival of others, whose

destiny is out of our hands, especially

if you are a native in this native land.

Father,

I know we

should be grateful for our small pains

in a nation where it’s easier to break

than follow law, where widows grieve

without recompense or consolation,

where limbs and heads of journalists

are delivered in trash bags when

they dare to print the truth,

where dogs bite with impunity,

masons fall from scaffolds in a puff

of dust and broken bones,

if lucky.

Eternally glad are we for our small woes.

Blessed are we to bed with all our appendages.

Bless our winged tenor and la licenciada chiflada, our future on their whims depends.

Blessed be especially our Notorious; one day may he yet sign our documents.

Give us this day our plentitude of wait.

And praise our politicians,

who teach us daily to endure.

Stretch our hearts ample as a yawn,

so we might accommodate the double-wide trailer of our neighbors’ grief,

and, by comparison, feel

gratitude for our own. Misery

without end. Amen.

This in the News Unmentioned The aged seamstress on

The old road to Querétaro

Has no work. Her

Sewing machine is broken.

Her eyes as well.

The rose seller from Santa Julia

Reads Neruda and dreams

Of buying his mother a stove.

It is the time of rain. She

Cooks outdoors with firewood.

The housekeeper’s five

Sons have all gone north.

Her favorite won’t phone, and

She can neither read nor write.

Meanwhile, arms drift south

And drugs shift north.

The avocados, beyond the budget

Of the seamstress, rose seller,

Housekeeper, travel north too

This season.

Police. Politicians.

México. United States.

Business always good

Between the two

Nations.

El Hombre

AFTER TAMAYO

On the eve of International Women’s Day

In a field on the road to Celaya

They find her body.

The deaf-mute girl who

Walked her dog in Parque Juárez.

No one tried, blamed, named.

The town knows:

It’s her father’s debts.

This is how they pay

Un hombre who can’t pay.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

In small print, in the back

Pages of today’s paper,

I read this small news:

Un Hombre Purépecha

Lifted from His Purépecha Village.

Daily the Purépechas demand his return.

Daily el hombre does not return.

He is only one of the many “lifted.”

When you are native in your native land

To whom do you demand? Who listens?

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

The bird merchant at the Tuesday mercado, Six cages of cenzontles strapped on his back, Shoves a mesh shopping bag so close

To my face, I have to step back to see.

A flutter of frightened canaries.

In the eyes of el hombre,

The same urgency, the same fear.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

The gringo Alan tells me the story

Of the pig who thought he was a dog.

Solovino he was called,

Because he came alone.

How each day Alan drove

Along the road to Dolores,

The dogs would run from

The squatter’s shack and give chase,

The pig who thought he was a dog

Trotting behind them.

Until one day the pig isn’t there.

The dogs disappear too.

One by one by one.

Alan shrugs.

When un hombre is hungry,

There is no one to blame.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

The “Religion” section of

Our Guanajuato newspaper

Features an article on St. Francis,

Un hombre of austerity, as

A model for all to live in poverty.

This in a country where almost every

Hombre, mujer y niño is already

On the path to sainthood.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

How it happened was like this.

One night Rosana catches un hombre

Breaking into her grocery store,

The son of a neighbor.

Her shouts wake the barrio.

They’re able to hold the thief

Until the police arrive.

Rosana is there to bear witness

At the court proceedings. And to

Witness the court set him free.

She gathers her pain in a handkerchief,

Goes home and calls the boy’s mother.

Rosana and the mother of the thief. Each

Woman lets loose a sea of grief.

When she tells me this story,

The sea is still there in Rosana’s eyes.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

Carlos and Raúl, the silver-tongued Poets of Chicano, Illinois, have never

Been to the country of their ancestry,

Though they’re silver-haired hombres.

When I invite them south, they refuse.

They’re afraid of bad hombres.

No one has told them

The ones who buy drugs and

Sell arms to los bad hombres

Are U.S. citizens.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

The blind harmonica player,

Un hombre who plays “Camino de Guanajuato”

In front of Banco Santander,

Clutches his baseball cap of small coins

Whenever he hears someone running too close.

No vale nada la vida, la vida no vale nada.

Life’s worth nothing, nothing is what life’s worth.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

Un hombre tells me:

You don’t even have to learn Spanish to live here.

Amado the San Miguel realtor.

You can train your staff to do what you need, And you don’t have to pay them much either.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

Dallas, 1953.

A seer named Stanley Marcus

Purchases a mural by Rufino Tamayo

To reinforce friendship between

Texas and Mexico.

This in a time in history

When Texas still posts

Signs on restaurants:

“No dogs or Mexicans.”

The painting is of un hombre

Anchored to the earth

Reaching for the heavens,

A balance of earth and sky,

North and south, yours and mine.

Because the universe is

About interconnection.

Tamayo calls this painting,

Man Excelling Himself.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

Message from Mexico to

The United States of America:

When we are safe, you are safe.

When you are safe, we are safe.

Tell this to your politicians.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

There is a Mexican saying,

Hablando se entiende la gente.

Talking to one another

We understand one another.

I would add: And listening

We understand even better.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

Mándanos luz. Send us all light.

Adelina Cerritos

Adelina Cerritos,

at your service. Thin

shrug and a ni modo grin.

Could you

use some help quizás?

Might you

need a cook perhaps?

Maybe someone

to do the wash?

Brings her knuckles together

in a scrub woman’s prayer.

Adelina of the nubby

sweater and plastic shoes.

Adelina of the pewter hair.

It’s that I have a medical

appointment in Celaya

and not enough pesos

to get there.

It’s that my breasts are

charred from the chemo.

Chamuscados, she says.

Charred. Tortillas

forgotten on the comal.

Adelina del campo.

Adelina de Guanajuato. Thin

shrug and a ni modo grin.

Te A—

A boy and a girl embrace, kiss

within the triangle of my parking

space. A geometric equation

proving the whole greater

than the sum of the parts.

Beyond the eye of Church,

traffic, and mothers, here,

in the privacy of a callejón

that rolls soundlessly downhill,

dissolves into the wall of

the chapel of San Juan de Dios,

patron of booksellers, alcoholics,

and the sick, sufferers all…

Even in a town

named for an armed angel,

love finds a route.

A boy and a girl kiss:

seven mute organ cacti

and a nicho de Guadalupe

as witnesses.

To prove love is ever

expanding in space and time,

the boy drafts a Valentine

on the parking triangle’s

hypotenuse—

my neighbor’s stone wall.

“Te”…

sprayed red in block letters.

Then “A”…

Across town,

as narcos duly collect protection

rent from tortilla vendors,

even as townsfolk disappear,

like wallets plucked from

Costco customers’ pockets,

and lifetime savings are obediently

stashed at bus stop trash bins

per phone extortionists’ instruction,

while gentle twilight descends,

releasing, soundless as moths,

serial rapists,

the authorities move swiftly

when children violate

property owned by foreigners.

Love, after all,

is a dangerous conflagration,

an axiom even

Euclid would conclude.

The boy is let go with a few

slaps for his proper education.

The girl wisely escaped at the first

sight of uniforms and guns.

And so, as it was before,

and ever will be,

the neighbor’s wall is

power-hosed to its former

serenity. Except

for a faint pink scar:

Te A—

Te A—

A song crowned with

humility and thorns,

extending into infinity,

stigmata of the forlorn.

A Boy with a Machine Gun Waves to Me Maybe he is the same

age as the forty-three

from Ayotzinapa,

burned and buried

like trash.

Dark of skin perhaps

the same as the Atotonilco

man arrested and jailed

after a gunfire exchange

he did not begin,

in front of his own,

in front of his home.

Or in collusion with those

who abducted the blind

girl from Parque Juárez

and abandoned her shell

on the road to Celaya,

wrapped in a blanket,

forever in a field of sleep.

He’s in the back of a jeep

with other boys. They

could be a baseball team.

Instead, they’re dressed

in black uniforms,

on their way to work

with machine guns.

I was coming from the market

with a basket of eggs

and a round loaf of bread,

a xoloitzcuincli perched

warm in the crook of my arm.

By Callejón de los Muertos,

their jeep rumbled past.

So many sons armed

with guns like toys,

though I know they’re

real because I’ve asked.

Before they disappear

from view, my hand

raises itself as if

asking a question.

From the back of the jeep

a hand without a machine gun

answers back.

Tepoztlán

roosters

yodel

dogs

debate

church bells

hiccup

dawn

yawns

Señor Martín

First, the urgent story

about an operation

for his lung. For sympathy,

he posed as mute and wrote

his plea on wrinkled paper.

Doubtful. All the same,

I gave. He was not young.

I lowered my donation

from the balcony

in a mesh market bag

on ixtle rope.

On his next call,

I offered to organize

a collection if he would

leave hospital details

in my mailbox.

But he forgot.

His lung was cured

by the next week.

His voice as well,

miraculously

restored.

Then he came

with only his unnamed

need and no story.

I had no change

except five hundred pesos,

which the bank machines

dispense like PEZ

to extranjeros like me.

Hard to find anyone,

humble or lordly, willing to

part ways with smaller currency.

I gave him what I had then.

Five hundred pesos, but

this brought him back

swifter than a swallow.

Sometimes twice

within a week,

enough to raise my ire

and blow my Buddhahood.

Back and back again he came.

Calixto said he knows him

as Martín, who leads the

donkey for the wedding

callejoneadas.

He looks like no party

host to me. Scraggy

as a cat. Thin mustache,

the kind pranksters

add on the Mona Lisa.

Dirty newsboy cap.

Glass shards for eyes.

Clothes borrowed, perhaps.

A Chekhov peasant, not

pandemic-unemployed. Or,

maybe victim of his own

vices. Who knows?

Sometimes he raises hell

when I refuse to answer,

ringing my brass bell

like the San Juan de Dios church

calling forth the faithful.

As if the schoolhouse is on fire.

I gave him once

one hundred pesos.

Then one weekend I had

no change at all but fifty.

He seemed to agree on this price.

Now he nods in gratitude,

and I apologize for sending

him running after money

when the wind has fun.

Saturdays,

or sometimes Sundays,

when he knows Calixto isn’t

here, he comes.

And so, with time

this is how we’ve settled

on what’s fair.

I can imagine how

hard it is to be him,

how hard to ask.

Today I sent him

with his weekly share.

Surprised him.

Surprised myself

by saying

for the first time—

“Cuídese, Señor Martín. ”

Swallows, Guanajuato Airport At home in the “o”

of GUANAJUATO,

golondrinas.

Cielo sin sombrero

Voy a vender

el cielo San Miguelense,

este azul jacaranda

que queda tan bonito

junto a los techos de barro.

Seguro que está a la venta.

Por supuesto que sí.

Ya que aquí

Se Vende,

Se Alquila,

Se Renta

todo.

Monte,

memoria,

río,

mujer,

historia,

ajonjolí.

El cielo lo venderé

a rebanadas.

Y a los extranjeros

les cobraré el doble

por doblar

el costo de la vida.

¡Atención!

Se vende un cielo sin sombra,

este cielo celeste al que tanto

le hace falta un sombrero.

Y,

si me inspiro

y me va bien,

Alquilo Nubes

también.

Sky Without a Hat

I’m going to sell

the San Miguel sky,

this jacaranda blue

that suits perfectly

clay roofs.

Of course, it’s available.

Absolutely and for sure.

Here everything is

For

Sale,

Rent,

Lease.

Mountain,

prickly pear,

hacienda,

stone,

woman,

mud.

I’ll sell sky

by the slice.

Charge foreigners

double

for doubling

the cost of living.

Attention!

Sky without shade

for sale, this celestial

blue in bad need

of a hat.

And,

if all goes

as planned:

Clouds

For Rent.

Police Blotter, May 5th, 2013, San Miguel de Allende

Piropos given to the elderly—one.

Listening without interrupting—four.

Admiration for wildlife without intent to kill—two.

Homes on Sunday with no one knocking on the door—seven.

Hugging and kissing babies—one hundred and eleven.

Vehicles loaned to the needy—three.

Pedestrians halted by jacaranda—thirteen.

Employees who love their jobs—eight.

Healed by laughter—sixty-seven.

Domestic harmony—thirty-three.

Citizens held hostage by the sunset—fifty-six.

Beautification and creation in lieu of violence—twenty-one.

Orderly conduct without force—forty-four.

Gifts of money with no personal motive—five.

Telephone kindness—thirteen.

Sexual generosity—three.

Poems delivered—one.

Quiero ser maguey en mi próxima vida Dar cara al sol todo el día.

Reventar hijos al aire

Como una piñata.

Ahorrar agua.

Brotar una flor con fleco estirándose al cielo.

Estirando, estirando al cielo, qué lujo.

Quiero pertenecer a estas tierras

Que existían antes de que

El mundo fuera redondo.

Picar las nalgas

De los que se acercan demasiado.

Regalar aguamiel al que se atreve a

Chupar mi jugo.

Y morir de esta comunión.

Deshacerme como ceniza.

Volver a vivir en la tierra.

Violenta.

Explotar de la huerta como Paricutín.

Volver volver volver a renacer.

Morir para siempre ser.

I Want to Be a Maguey in My Next Life Face to the sun all day.

Burst offspring into the air

Like a piñata.

Store water.

Bloom a tasseled flower

Stretching itself to the sky.

Stretching, stretching to the sky,

What luxury.

I want to belong to these lands

That existed before the world

Was round.

Pinch the asses of those who

Come too close to me.

Give aguamiel to the one who dares

Suck my juice.

And die from this communion.

Dissolve like ash.

Return to live on earth.

Violent.

Detonate from a field like Paricutín.

Return return return to be reborn.

Die to eternally be.

Cantos

y

llantos

Back Then or Even Now

A SONG FOR GUITAR

I liked being young

with you once.

A moment or two,

here and there

with you once.

When you

were a poet,

and I was a poet.

Wordsmiths afraid

of the words

shimmering

right before us.

I remember censoring

myself when I was sober.

Spontaneous combustion

when I wasn’t.

We did a lot of things

back then

under the courage

of alcohol.

We were a two-

ring-circus knife act.

Blade zinging

in the air, thud-

landing near

a shivering artery.

A thrill, a chill a minute.

Me and you.

I was leaving town,

and you were staying.

That’s why we each held

back from saying.

It takes growing older

to see some things

imagined were real.

Back then or even now.

Canto for Women of a Certain Llanto AFTER DYLAN THOMAS

I’d rather wear none

than ugly underwear made

for women of a certain age.

Rage, rage. Do not go into that good night

wearing sensible white or beige.

Women who have squash-

blossomed into soft flesh,

and grieve the frothy loss of the interior

garments of youth.

Rage, rage. Do not go into that good night

wearing sensible white or beige.

Gone the black-lace architecture of the past, the thong, bikinis, hipsters, G-strings. Gone, gone.

The underwire and lace push-up cups

replaced with feed sacks and ace

bandage straps. Pachydermian.

Prosthetic. A cruel aesthetics.

Rage, rage. Do not go into that good night

wearing sensible white or beige.

Excellent women, who in wise vision flower,

blaze, scintillate in your finest era.

Refuse the misnomer “Intimate Apparel.”

For what lies beyond XL or 36C is

the antithesis of intimacy.

Garments sent to exile ánimas solas

to the Siberia of celibacy.

To sleep with dogs or cats

instead of lovers.

Oh, La Perla, why hast thou forsaken us?

Will no one take pity and design foundations, nay, lingerie for women of exuberance?

Something imaginative,

like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.

In my imagination I create a holster

to pack my twin firearms. My 38-38’s.

A beautiful invention of oiled

Italian leather graced tobacco golden,

whip-stitched, hand-tooled

with Western roses and winged scrolls,

mother-of-pearl snaps

and nipples capped with silver aureoles.

And you, my mother,

gazing from your chaparrita height,

who has cursed and blessed

me with your DNA like so many

Mexican women with a pillar for a torso

like Coatlicue.

Magas, brujas, chingonas.

Rage, rage. Do not go into that good night

wearing sensible white or beige.

Washing My Rebozo by Hand

I wash my silk rebozo in the shower

against my naked skin

to keep the fringe from knotting.

Fuchsia cloth draped over my shoulder,

one Amazon breast exposed.

Even folded in half, the shawl

is longer than I am tall,

fringe work grazing the floor.

For an instant, the water

spills out hot as August

when I turn on the tap,

and I regret my reckless idea

to wash the cloth myself.

Bougainvillea darkens to cranberry,

but, thankfully, the color doesn’t run.

Fibers slick as corn silk when rinsed.

The wet rebozo conforms to my skin

like dough draped over my empanada belly, eggplant breasts, Coatlicue ass.

I admire myself in the mirror.

Some ancient memory approves.

And I think of that fool William Frawley,

of I Love Lucy, who said of co-star Vivian Vance,

“She has a body like a sack of doorknobs.”

At fifty-six

my Buddha body

bows to gravity.

A life lived.

I am not a sack of doorknobs.

At these heights,

I like myself enough to pose

in this poem just as I am,

solid as Teotihuacán.

A woman of an age

she doesn’t give a damn

what’s said

by a sack of pitos

posing as a man.

Having Recently Escaped from the Maws of a Deathly Life, I Am Ready to Begin the

Year Anew

For the New Year I will buy myself a chocolate éclair filled with custard. Eat it slowly, with an infinity of joy, without concern of woe and tight underwear.

Susan’s mother was directed by her doctor to cut down on salami or risk death. “But, doctor,” she said, “is life worth living without salami?”

For my new year I will sit down in the sun and dunk in my coffee a little knob of bread hard as my elbow, and on it, without concern for cholesterol, I will spread delicious butter, the kind that reminds me of Mexico City’s Café La Blanca on Calle Cinco de Mayo, or the clinking glasses of El Gran Café de la Parroquia in Veracruz.

I will snooze with my dogs till I radiate love, for they are life’s true gurus. I will wake gently so as not to disturb the dreams that have alighted overnight on the branches of sleep, and before they flutter away on soundless wings, I will examine and admire each.

This season of my escape, I will push my foot down on the accelerator of my life, vámonos vobiscum, and hurry to sit under a tree with a book thicker than a dozen homemade tamales. Henceforth, I will read only for pleasure or transmogrification.

All toxic folk are to be excised from the remaining days of my life, the chupacabras and chupacabronas, who are a purgatory of pain.

I will allow myself the luxury to laugh daily and in liberal doses to overbalance the bitter compost called the news.

I will cease waiting for someone to do something about the war, the walls, the guns, the drugs, the stupidity of leaders, and ally myself with citizens who practice the art of tossing their shoes at heads of state.

There is much I know and much I do not know as a woman at fifty-six, but I am certain I know this. Life is not worth living without salami.

Four Poems on Aging

Ménière’s

This loss of the

Right ear’s hearing,

No cross.

I only half listen

Anyhow.

Funny Bone

So much depends

Upon a staircase

Glazed with

Rainwater

Seven

Years

Ago.

A Universal Truth

Expanding

Like the universe:

Teats, ass, feets.

Floaters

FOR DR. JULIE TSAI

They taunt and tease

From peripheral vision.

Duendes at quiet play.

Semi-colons too

Coy to see directly.

Dr. Tsai my opthamologist

Insists:

“Harmless. I’ve checked.”

To date, three

Medals of distinction.

One on my right.

Two on the left.

Both dizzy as cinder.

Startling like falling leaves.

“Harmless,” she says.

I say, I’ll believe it

When I see it.

Making Love After Celibacy

I bled a little,

Like the first time.

There was pain.

Not unlike the first time.

And a winged bliss

Just beyond reach.

Like that first time, too.

More pain than rhapsody.

To be sure.

A female body

Ashamed of itself again.

Not a girl’s modesty

This time.

A woman’s apology for

Erosion and weather.

The body offered

Like an altar

Of xempoaxóchitl marigolds.

A poor woman’s offering

Of maize and water.

An offering all the same.

Lullaby

The world

turns

in the same

direction

that I do

as I sleep.

I turn

and help,

in turn,

the planet

turn.

The planet

turns.

And

gently

turns me

in my sleep.

Instructions for Vigiling the Dying 1. Take notes.

2. Cut a lock of hair.

3. Say what you feel and

say it with conviction.

Even if she can’t hear.

4. Forgive.

Especially yourself.

5. Tell her she can go.

6. Give yourself permission to let her go.

7. Give yourself permission to cry.

If not now, when?

8. Hold her hand.

9. Pay attention to how the face transmogrifies.

Especially the nose and ears.

10. Imagine you are the moon.

Bathe yourself with light.

Bathe the dying.

Gently. With care.

11. Breathe.

12. Focus on this moment.

13. Grieve.

14. There are no rules.

Not even these.

Exploding Cigar of Love

TO THE TUNE OF EL “HOKEY POKEY”

You toss your corazón in.

I toss my corazón in.

We toss our corazones together,

And we shake them all about.

We light the love cigar,

And we get a little high.

And that’s what it’s all about.

I write a poem for you.

You write a love poem— for me?

We send a hundred and three emails,

And we shake them all about.

We light the love cigar,

And we get a little high.

And that’s what it’s all about.

You advance un paso.

I retreat pa’trás.

I tacuachito toward you,

And you take a two-step back.

The more I pull, the more you tug.

The more you push, the more I scram.

What are we?

Pepé Le Pew and the cat?

You toss in sub self-esteem.

I toss in emotional hemophilia.

Insecurities, addictions,

And we mix them all about.

We light the love cigar,

And we get a little high.

And that’s what it’s all about.

You text: You’re too much for me, baby.

I text: Well, maybe you’re not enough!

You text: I need to be free.

And I’m shakin’ all about.

We’ve been tripping on the love cigar.

Now sobriety sets in. Bang!

And that’s what it’s all about.

God Breaks the Heart Again and Again Until It Stays Open

AFTER A QUOTE FROM SUFI INAYAT KHAN

But what if my heart is a 7-Eleven after its third daytime robbery in a week?

What if my heart is a piñata trashed to tissue and peppermint shrapnel?

What if my heart is a peeled mango bearing an emerald housefly?

What if my heart is an air conditioner weeping a rosary of rusty tears?

What if my heart is Sebastião Salgado’s sinkhole swallowing another child?

What if my heart is Death Valley in wide-view Cinemascope?

What if my heart is a chupacabrón chanting, “Build the wall!”?

What if my heart is the creepy uncle’s yawning zipper?

What if my heart is a Pentecostal babbling a river of tongues?

What if my heart is the cross-eyed Jesus bought at the Poteet flea market?

What if my heart is El Paso, Texas, in bed with the corpse of Ciudad Juárez?

What if my heart is unhinged from the weight of its lice-ridden wings?

What then for an encore, oh my soul, when you have blessed me a hundredfold?

Mrs. Gandhi

When Gandhi took his vow of celibacy, did he consult first with Mrs.

Gandhi? Or simply take his path gradually and silently? So she would not protest. Peacefully or violently.

Wise it might’ve been to not seek dialogue with her. His work was worry enough. Mrs. Gandhi attributed to this his gradual nocturne apathy.

Complain? He went about his own tasks selflessly. How could she take offense? How could she blame? A pain as private and perfect as a river stone.

She consigned grief to a sandalwood chest alongside doubts.

Maybe the abandonment was abrupt. Overnight. A sudden insult to her age.

A small rage lingering that made her chastise herself as vain. Or did she simply bow and go, so to speak, with the Ganges?

Did Gandhi’s kids complain daddy was away—again!—on his campaigns?

Did sons resent father and father sons? Did wife wish she were again the far-away wife? She knew too well how sometimes it is lonelier with company than with solitude.

When Gandhi took his vow of celibacy, were temptations too many, and so he declared, This drama is too time consuming. An itch he wished to remove before the scratch. He reasoned the body was to be abandoned eventually, so taught the Hindus. Why not walk away now, like the cicada leaving behind its shell?

Did Mrs. Gandhi understand and throw her love life in the pyre too? Or did she suspect a rival? Or simply follow her husband’s lead with spinning?

Does one forget passion? Did she look at herself in the mirror and put away her needs? What could Mrs. Gandhi do when complaint was petty, endurance piety? Take up poetry?

I wonder what Mrs. Gandhi thought when her husband came home and said, I think it for the best if I had my own bedroom now. Please don’t take it personally.

Cause and effect. Effect and cause. And did Mrs. Gandhi give it another thought because she was after all Mrs. Gandhi, or did she not mention the slight?

Surely, she thought something when alone, when she was lying down in the dark cool of her room. Surely there must’ve been some resentment gossamer slender. Some sense of her days slipping beyond reach. I am too young to be old, Mrs. Gandhi may have thought. She may have claimed this even aloud to herself or to her husband.

But the sarcophagus of celibacy is alabaster and sealed her to her fate. This was not what biographers investigate, nor did Mrs. Gandhi think it apropos to leave behind her personal thoughts.

In the stillness of the night, when cicadas sang with longing, did Mrs. Gandhi listen?

Poem Written at Midnight

I felt so alone

In my marriage

With my husband,

Who was not my husband.

And so I let him go.

I feel so alone

In my city

That is not my city.

And so I hope to flee.

I feel so alone

In my life

That is not my life.

Suéltame, mi vida.

Ya no soy tuya.

Deja de hacerme infeliz.

Year of My Near Death

Six months after

my mother died

a ribbon unspooled

from my uterus

like a stillborn child.

At fifty-three

the womb awoke,

exhaled,

and spoke

one last time.

For my mother’s sake,

my own.

I, who birthed

no one in life,

birthed grief.

Thin red line

on a road map

guiding my escape

from servant

to master.

From daughter

to adult ever after.

My body spoke

once before

at thirty-three,

year of my near death,

year of my cross.

I succored despair

with silence, sleep.

Measured self-

worth by others.

A child still

borrowing to pay

the bills. No good

at anything but words.

And what good were words

when the month began?

Nine months the uterus

did not breathe.

Nine months wavered

before the breach.

Saved by Providence,

angels or ancestors.

Stigmata to prove

this story true.

I’ve died twice and twice

survived. At thirty-three,

the Christ year.

And twin decades later

when my mother

transformed herself

to light.

Twice died.

Twice death-defied.

Marvel at the body’s power

to speak, mend, resurrect.

Forgive.

Letter to Pat Little Dog After Losing Her Son

I don’t think we can love too much, do you?

I think there is an ad infinitum to give and receive love. And I know as fact

we continue to receive love after

this thin life. I know, not believe,

this is law. Perceived like water

wrinkled by wind. Or,

can’t-be-ignored as lightning.

You are a woman who knows the

knowing. I hope your son continues

speaking. And you continue listening.

My father speaks to me

like the wings of a stingray.

My mother shimmers in air,

a silver moth. I know when

they are here. As in life,

different as ever.

One is water.

The other atmosphere.

But what I do

not know in this lifetime,

to love as a mother loves a son.

I want to say as they say here, I accompany you in your dolor.

Accompany you and all who

carry this wound daily.

I, who birthed no one.

May I give you

the moon as consolation?

May it bring back your boy.

Add his name to the conversation

of light you send and give.

Receive and send. Receive

this love I send tonight, my friend.

Día de los Muertos

On Day of the Dead I ask you to come

home with me to see my altar.

That’s a better line than come and see my etchings.

You do come. Like the spirits that night.

You follow the xempoaxóchitl petals and make your way to my door, that door abandoned and solitary a full year. You make your way and say you’ve been sad, and I say I’ve been sad too, because it’s true, I have.

The one before you

alive and haunting my heart, and I

want and long for release from the hurting.

You come with your own ghost following you.

Save me, we think, but don’t say it.

I ask, Thirsty? And serve you mezcal before you answer.

Drink the bottle left for los difuntos, clink our copitas.

I’ll send you home with the cabrito I set out for my father, the chocolate bizcochitos, the buñuelos on a clay plate.

Everything but the confetti jello, I say, and laugh.

Sal y agua on this altar. Salt perhaps for our tears, water for the dead who are always thirsty.

Scent of warm wax candles and acrid marigolds.

Edith Piaf singing “La vie en rose.” Chavela Vargas.

Lola Beltrán. Nina Simone’s “I Put a Spell on You.”

And I wonder if that cabrito will cast its magic spell.

The night is long.

We talk late though you have to get up early.

Talk while the dead come back and savor us. Talk, which is a kind of alimento, a nourishing.

Talk con ganas, as they say. You and I.

With feeling.

Buen árbol / A Good Tree

A SONG FOR GUITAR

El que a buen árbol se arrima,

Buena sombra le cobija.

Arrímate. Anímate.

Don’t be afraid of me.

If you were smart

You’d know I’m a good good tree.

If you were smart

You’d know I’m a good good tree.

I’m the finial and flag of my own nation.

I’m the school of knocks.

I’m a little bit of comfort mixed

With a little bit of consternation.

I’m the waltz of reason

In the season of rain at last!

If you were smart

You’d know I’m a good good tree.

If you were smart

You’d know I’m a good good tree.

Sweet huisache, teach me.

Nourish me, nogal.

Alamo, fortify.

Mesquite, endurance please.

I’ve waited out drought.

Sprouted from my own fire.

Survived the hailstorm

Of desire. Desire.

If you only knew.

If you were smart

You’d know I’m a good good tree.

If you were smart

You’d know I’m a good good tree.

The flower and the fruit am I.

Butterflies breathing life am I.

Resurrection and redemption am I.

Pie in the sky am I.

Kid and wise guy am I.

The still and the gale am I.

Fever and frustration am I.

The evening tide am I.

The soup without the fly am I.

The whole naranja am I.

I’ve died and risen

From the ash of my own

Hesitation. I’m creation.

But you don’t see.

If you were smart

You’d know I’m a good good tree.

If you were smart

You’d know I’m a good good tree.

I don’t have time for attitude sickness

At this altitude.

I don’t have time for percolators, Nuclear reactors.

I don’t need a flash-in-the-pan

Bit of ecstasy

When I’ve been struck by light.

I’m my own Las Vegas

Night with real stars

For the show. I’m in it

For the mystic. Stick

Around and I’ll show you

A thing or two.

I’m a good good tree.

I’m a good good tree.

I’m a good good good

Good tree.

Cisneros

sin

censura

Mount Everest

Because he was there.

Back in 1982

—Why not?

was the question.

Not—Why?

What’s more,

he was a poet.

Alluring

before I knew

better.

His name?

Ethan. Seamus.

Elton. Or Ian.

Poetry to me.

An empire to conquer.

A foreign language to master.

A notch on my unchastity

belt when my notches

were few.

May I remind you

I was twenty-eight only

in years. My true

age was oak.

Seedling. More

acorn perhaps. Or

possibly spore.

I remember hardly

anything except

he wrote me a poem

when I flew away,

some goodbye,

heartless nothing

is what I recall.

He lived in Old

Town. Hipster

city. A cool I

couldn’t afford.

I suffered

neighborhood

envy, apartment

hunger. This

may have been

his true spell,

come to think of it.

But what

I cannot forget.

His bed.

The mattress

crinkled

as if wrapped

in cellophane.

As if stuffed

with Rice Krispies.

I couldn’t sleep.

Always.

Left before dawn.

Taxied home.

My futon on

the floor never

more welcoming.

Right now he’s

probably

wed to Pippa.

Cosima.

Fiona or Poppy.

Don’t remember

much. Some men

are sexier

with their clothes

on. Don’t

remember

the sex.

Funny.

Just the mattress.

Variations in White

i.

I am Paracho guitar when you are in me.

Am balsa I am. A harp for wind I am.

A holy thing without a name.

My body a white hum only the leaves can hear.

ii.

There should be a word for this

greed. Your knee

nudging open my knees.

iii.

Because

I cannot take you in my mouth or in my sex,

I ask you to come on my skin.

You dip your fingers in this holy water

I ask you to taste for me.

You do. For me.

You watch me watch you.

iv.

You’re a little pearl in my bed, Perlita.

You’re a little pearl, Perlita.

Beautiful, pretty.

Perlita, you sleep as I write this.

Perlita, I sleep as you read this.

Eres una perla en mi camita, Perlita.

Eres una perla, Perlita.

Bello, bonito.

Duermes, Perlita, mientras escribo.

Duermo, Perlita, mientras lo lees.

v.

For whose pleasure

a string of saliva

from the lips of the lover

to the beloved’s sex.

In My Little Museum of Erotica In my little museum

of erotica

I would place your feet.

I would place your feet

sandwiching

my feet.

Their softness.

Their heat.

And I would

place your arms

as you do mornings,

beneath my neck,

around my waist,

tugging me towards you,

my back to your chest.

This

well-beingness

I would set

on a Corinthian

column.

And those

who are aesthetes

of mornings and feet

would say, Ah!

Yes!

My Mother and Sex

Eight live births.

How many dead?

Who knew? Not us.

Her seven survivors.

When a bedroom

Scene flashed on TV

She’d shriek and

Scamper to her room,

As if she’d seen

A rat.

It made us laugh. What

Were we? Immaculate

Conceptions? Could be

Sex for her was dead.

A duty dreadful as cooking

For her famished army. Sad

To think this. Pure

Postulation from lack of

Conclusive conversation.

She never talked of sex.

Especially not with me.

She said

I put everything

In a book. Agreed.

But what was worse?

The truth,

Or my imagination?

What I know for sure:

Rapture for her,

A library record symphony.

Ecstasy, opera in the park.

Intimate pleasure,

Books.

Freire, Terkel, Chomsky.

Herculean. Brilliant. Men

Unlike the man who

Shared her bed, who

Favored Sábado Gigante

To Sebastião Salgado.

And yet Father spoiled her.

His Mexican empress.

Parícutin tempestuous.

Clueless to what she craved.

Her red flare

Sent up weekends: Help!

There’s no intelligent life here!

Evenings in the blue

Moonbeam of TV,

Father mesmerized by

Mexican, thick-thighed floozies—

Mother’s word, not mine—

Shaking their hoochie-coochies.

Father never

Drank, ran off, split flesh.

Brought home each faithful

Friday, a paycheck. Why

Would she complain?

She lived alone

In a house full of lives

By the time I knew her.

Snake bitter. Mingy.

Dead before being born.

A woman in formaldehyde.

Stepping on Shit

Sol says, Buena

fortuna is on its way.

Money’s sure

to arrive today

or next.

Pesos.

Or better yet,

dólares.

A sale

of her labor on canvas

thanks to the new pups

who have littered

the garden with luck.

Her house,

like mine,

the sum of a woman’s

life creating.

A flower in a white wimple

sprouted from the organ cacti

yesterday. Today

it furls itself

against the rain.

I’m a witness

in this house of invention.

I write. And watch

myself write.

Furl and unfurl myself

when I shut or open

my laptop.

Sol, success upon

success, good-looking kids,

sweet dollop of a grandchild,

a house ready for its close-up,

and stellar career,

complains.

Sol carries her

one regret like a

dark cloud on a stick—

she’s alone.

In the guest house,

I unpack my breasts

from their holsters.

Savor cotton against skin.

Read propped in bed

at leisure. But keep

a sweater within reach.

In case the handyman

barges in.

Look forward to the day

when I’m old enough

to not care.

At sixty-six, not there yet.

At sixty-six I watch the years gather in the cenotes of my eyes,

in the theater drapery of the neck,

and—surprise!—

the dolphin pale underbelly

of my upper arms.

Trickster time arrived

while I slept.

It takes some getting used to.

I watch my transformation

bemused. Just as I once

watched myself alter into

my woman’s body. Watch

and marvel now as then.

Relieved to some degree.

Fascinated with where

I am and where I am

traveling.

Poor Sol.

Stranded without a man.

To tell the truth,

I don’t want to see

someone my own age

naked. Nor have

him see me.

Nothing to do with

shame or modesty.

More akin to fear

we might laugh.

I read while

the new pups

yap in the garden.

Relieved wherever

my steps take me.

Dólares or dolores.

Accept whatever

is on my path.

Naranja completa

i.

Do I miss

Having a man

Enter me?

Crack

Me in two?

Before. After.

I do

Not.

Truth be

Told,

Never.

Am Cavafy

In love

With memory.

Alive with

Story. Do

I miss the

Acapulco rush

Of the dive

Into the fire

Of foam?

The plummeting

Into the sea

Of myself?

Profound mystery?

I do

Not. The

Wound between

My legs taut

As cat gut

On guitar.

An Egyptian

Tomb winched

And looted.

Relieved

To be my own

Destroyer.

I enter my

Body with

A poem slick

With my own

Spit.

Slide and grunt.

A nice, tight fit.

ii.

In my Taipei

Dream

I’m holding

A penis

In my hand.

A scepter.

A wand

Thick as a cop’s

Baton.

Hefty warm.

Pulsing.

Definitely

Alive.

A thing

Attached to no one.

All my own.

A weapon to tap

On my palm.

And ask, Now,

What

Do I want

With this?

You Better Not Put Me in a Poem One had a long curved scimitar like a Turkish moon.

One had a fat tamale plug.

One had a baby pacifier.

One had a lightbulb he was proud of.

It gave me the creeps.

I can never forget it.

I could never pick it out in a police line-up.

Not in a million years.

Not even with an AK-47 to the side of my head.

One liked to pull it out like a switchblade when least expected.

At his mother’s.

Standing in the bathroom, the door open.

His ma in the kitchen talking on the phone.

Me on the couch trying to read.

He thought this was sexy.

One liked to skim Playboy magazines when we were making love.

I found this humiliating.

One liked to put his hands on his hips like he was Mister Big Stuff.

This pissed me off.

One liked to dip his fingers in his semen and lick them.

He drove me wild.

One slept in my bed but never touched me.

This was my choice.

One drew a spiral on the envelopes of all his letters.

Translation: Your back door is mine alone.

One lived with a woman.

One lived alone but refused to let me see where he lived.

Like a serial killer with something to hide.

One liked to whack me with his dong like a cop’s baton.

He had issues.

One liked to dress me as a boy and take me from behind.

He had issues.

One was an alcoholic and would go on endless riffs.

The war.

The women who left.

The wife he wouldn’t.

One night he called from a bar and left seventeen messages on my machine.

Did I mention he was an alcoholic?

One never touched the stuff. It made him vomit.

He was always home.

One drove a nervous car with too many miles and not enough insurance.

But every weekend he drove two hundred miles in frantic traffic to see me.

One never came even when I offered to pay the airfare.

One was married to somebody. A string of somebodies.

We saw each other off and on/in between/during/above and below/over

A quarter of a century.

When he divorced the last time, I realized finally: He was the father almighty’s approval.

I would never get his approval.

I didn’t need his approval anymore.

I had made him up.

When he came, he:

Hiccupped like a dolphin.

Snorted like a horse.

Embarrassed me hollering like a girl.

Was strangely silent like a deer.

Panted like a little dog and planted a kiss on my butt.

Each and every time.

Never. And afterwards he:

Laughed a little.

Wheezed.

Hacked up a furry cough.

Sprinted off to the shower like I was the plague.

Lit up a smoke.

Never smoked.

Had a collapsed lung.

Had only one lung and was a percussionist.

After our goodbye I sent him

Pawnshop bongo drums and marshmallows from Texas All the way to an address in Athens.

A year later the bongo drums and marshmallows came back unopened.

Across how many oceans?

A package stamped in Greek letters: “Address Unknown.”

But I read it as: “Undress Alone.”

I sent a hundred-dollar bouquet of parrot

Tulips to a restaurant where one worked as a bartender Even though he was terrible in bed because:

I was grateful.

I was needy.

I was young.

(See above.)

I was/am/always will be a romantic.

Which is the same as saying: I fall in love all by myself.

I sent one a poem.

I never saw him again.

I sent one a twenty-seven-page letter wrapped around a brick for dramatic effect.

I sent one postcards from Trieste, Sarajevo, Sparta, Sienna, Perpignan, Describing my other lovers.

All he did was laugh.

One was a Tejano fitness freak from Austin.

Tremendous.

A lottery prize.

I’m not kidding.

Until he opened his mouth and spoke:

Like a guitar.

Like a Texan.

Like a redneck Texan.

Once when I was making licuados for breakfast, he said, Great, I love smoothies!

One knew what a woman wants above all else is words.

To be told he loves her.

To be told how he is going to love her as he is loving her.

To be told there is no woman like her.

I can’t forget him.

I don’t remember his name.

He is not my ex,

Nor my y, nor even my z.

He is my eterno.

One night on a bed of sand, under a canopy of falling stars, One, who wanted to make love to him,

Made love to me.

He to him. I to they.

And afterwards I concluded a ménage à trois is useless because: I need love.

A semblance of love at least.

Eternity.

And how can you ignite eternity if preoccupied with— How do I look?

One didn’t care what he looked like, and this was precisely why He was sexy.

He was as impeccable and godly as GQ.

But the more exquisite he grew, the more I turned into a rodent.

He was my own height and weight.

It was easy to flip him over in bed, and the fact that I could

Made me feel powerful.

And I liked this power.

One was big as a redwood, and when he lay on top Of me, I felt like hollering: Timberrrrrrrrrrr!

One was violet like the ink from a sea creature, beautiful but deadly.

The skin beneath his clothes glowed from within like a lamp of alabaster.

His thing was a blue baby born without air.

His thing was pink like an angry child holding its breath.

I don’t remember his thing. I don’t remember anything.

One confessed, after making love to me, he was still in love With a ballerina who had moved away to Kansas. Then, He bought me pancakes.

One confessed he was still in love with an actress he’d dumped when She was an unknown but was now celebrated in Cannes And Paris. And this was killing him.

One bought me:

A five-pound typewriter.

A white Izod polo shirt I never wore because it was too Dallas.

A bag of pan dulce and put me to bed as if I was his only child.

But,

I was in love with a sex- puto who made Love like a water-hose drowning a riot.

One took pictures of me nude when I was too shy to be nude.

I took pictures of me nude when I was too old to be nude.

It was obvious one had an Oedipal complex.

I was forty. He was twenty-one.

I lost interest in one, because I thought he looked like an old man.

He was forty. I was twenty-eight.

Pee on me, one demanded, and I knew I had to get out of there.

I came to bed wearing nothing but a belt of bells like a flock of sheep.

I came to bed wearing nothing but a mink coat.

I came to bed wearing a granny gown and long underwear.

I came to bed the moment one called, because he had to get up early and go to work,

And if I didn’t, he said I wasn’t going to get any.

And his love is the sweetest memory.

We made love on a train in Genoa in a restroom that smelled of pee.

I hated/adored/was terrified of him because: I was poor, and worse, ashamed of being poor.

I knew he would eventually leave me.

I wanted him to destroy me.

I thought pain was necessary.

I wanted to be him.

(All of the above.)

One was a pre-med student, and after making love would: Ask me to cough.

Tap on my back.

Thump me like a drum.

Read my body as if I was a well-tuned machine.

I had a crush on one until he appeared at my door

One night with a mustache exactly like my brother’s.

I met one in Tenejapa when he rose

From the Mayan jungle like a plumed serpent.

I met one across a boardroom table where he licked my nipples with his eyes.

I met one at a bar where a gay friend and I both wanted him, but I was the only one brave enough to ask,

Are you gay or are you straight?

Silence. Why?

Because I don’t have a lot of time.

One shook like a little tree when I left him.

There were no tears from me.

I shook like a little tree when one left me.

There were no tears from him.

Subsequently I learned this emotional equation: The first one to cry robs the other of the need to.

One was a sham shaman, and when we first made love he Smudged me with copal and let me place my tongue on his scars.

One became famous, and they make movies about his books.

One is a loser. He teaches at a university where they don’t care he’s a hustler.

One got married to Hello Kitty, though I suspect he’s in the closet.

One was Opus Dei. He dumped me for a Catholic he knocked up.

One wanted to knock me up just so he could say he knocked me up.

One was an anarchist, and I can’t forget the sex.

I don’t remember the sex. I remember him, and that was sexy enough.

One was bi, and now he’s gay.

One was straight, and now he’s celibate.

One had teeth like a rat, and now he can afford to have them fixed.

One was in love with a man, and when they kissed each other once In front of me, slowly, deliberately, a cigarette burning flesh, I was neither jealous nor sad but

Fascinated like a fleck of glitter somersaulting In a globe of snow.

I was Cinderella searching for the perfect fit, And when I tried his on for size, I knew.

It was the opposite of childbirth. One was born in my life When he slid in with a grunt, and it was then, I knew.

One was soft as a custard cone. I always felt it was my fault.

Once I dreamt I was carrying his penis through an airport When, without warning, it sputtered a geyser of shit.

I rushed it to the ladies’. Hesitated.

Decided the men’s room. Then paused.

I wasn’t sure where to go, but one thing I knew.

Over and over I said to aghast bystanders,

But it’s not mine, it’s not mine.

You better not, he said kicking

Off cowboy boots, unzipping his tight

Jeans, put me in a poem.

And the arrogance at first

When I had no such intent. Well,

I just knew

That would be the first,

If not the last,

Thing I would do.

Woman Seeks Her Own Company Profession:

Word weaver.

Fervent believer:

Humanity of humanity.

Proclivity:

Daydreaming.

Hobby:

Night-dreaming.

Sensitivity:

Everything.

Pleasure:

Books.

Biographies and poetry especially.

Lessons on how to mitigate disaster.

Medications:

Pen and paper.

Purpose:

Preservation.

Leisure:

Home.

Alone.

Unstressed.

Uncombed.

Undressed.

Indulgences:

Movies.

Pre-Hays and

Italian tragedies.

Because a good cry

Balances out a good laugh.

Favorite actress:

Anna Magnani.

Preferred company:

Burros.

Elephants.

Clouds.

Favorite soundtracks:

Trees speaking wind.

Rain.

Night thunder.

Nagual:

Ocelotl.

Like a lotl.

Nemeses:

Rodents.

Automobiles.

Planes.

Savored scents:

Mother’s lilies of the valley.

Grant Park lilacs.

Abuelito’s cigar.

México in the morning.

Family:

Friends.

Strangers:

Kin.

Achilles’ heel:

Rescuing.

Vulnerabilities:

Six brothers.

Anathema:

Babies.

Math.

Best trait:

Generosity.

Fatal flaw:

Generosity.

Put to rest:

Saber repartee and

Molotov bon mot.

Luxury:

Seclusion.

Foibles:

Love life.

Merit:

My life as witness.

Height:

5’2” or 157.48 cm last measured.

Diminishing with age.

However, simultaneously

Growing in self-worth.

Weight:

Done being concerned.

Shapeshifting into

Chichén Itzá.

Relinquished:

Vanity of paint.

Ever passionate:

Fashion.

Personal aim:

Mystic. This

Lifetime or next.

Auto-criticism:

At peace with being

Work-in-progress.

Solo-amusement:

Laughs aloud

At her own jokes.

Encourages:

Eccentricities.

Dislikes:

Chit-chat.

Parsimony.

Satellite loyalties.

Fond of:

Xolos.

Magueys.

Peonies.

Different drummer:

Since birth.

Path not taken.

All that.

Culinary skills:

None.

Decadences:

Unmade bed.

Weekends.

Some weekdays too.

Recompense:

Lounging like an odalisque.

Preferences:

What others think

Sent to department

Of dearly departed.

Artistry:

At sixty-five convinced

Just getting started.

Pilón

When in Doubt

When in doubt,

Wear faux leopard.

When in doubt,

Err on the side of generosity.

When in doubt,

Greet everyone as you would the Buddha.

When in doubt,

Collect blessings from those who own nothing.

When in doubt,

Absorb biographies to avoid life’s major mistakes.

When in doubt,

Make life’s major mistakes.

When in doubt,

Pay attention to the vendor shouting “Diooooos,”

Even when you find out he was only shouting “Gaaaaas.”

When in doubt,

Carry a handkerchief and a fan.

When in doubt,

Thank everyone. Twice.

When in doubt,

Heed the clouds.

When in doubt,

Sleep on it.

When in doubt,

Treat all sentient and insentient beings as kin.

When in doubt,

Forgive us our myopia

As we forgive those who are myopic against us.

When in doubt,

Unreel your grief to a tree.

When in doubt,

Remember this.

We are all on a

Caucus-race.

There is no start.

No finish.

Everyone wins.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It seems the success of my fiction in my lifetime has overshadowed the fact that I was once a poet. I still am.

I began my literary path in the sixth grade under the light of a lay teacher at Saint Aloysius Elementary School in Chicago. I wrote in secret in a composition book with a spiral spine. Mrs. Something was my teacher’s name. Her real name has disappeared like the school. But it was Mrs.

Something who believed I was remarkable, and this love transformed me from pumice to obsidian.

Elizabeth Dacenko was only a few years older than I when she taught me poetry my sophomore year at Josephinum High School in Chicago. I don’t know if in her lifetime she knew she was the first to out me as a writer. She knows now.

In my twenties, while working on my first novel, I gave birth to a poetry chapbook, Bad Boys, midwifed by California poets Gary Soto and Lorna Dee Cervantes as part of their Chicano Chapbook Series. Published by Lorna’s Mango Press in a limited edition of five hundred copies, it sold for one dollar and was distributed from a big bag I strapped across my shoulder. A chapbook, for those who don’t know, is a small book of about a dozen pages, usually bound together with two staples in the center. Gary says he remembers the Mango Press stapler didn’t work properly, and he was obliged to hand-bend each staple shut with a kitchen spoon on a kitchen table. This seems to me poetic justice since the poems had been written on a kitchen table too.

Bad Boys contained a slender selection of poetry, all from my MFA graduate thesis and all reproduced later in my first full-length book, My Wicked Wicked Ways, published in 1987 by visionary Norma Alarcón’s Third Woman Press. It was after the release of Wicked Ways that it occurred to me that publishing poetry was the antithesis of writing poetry. I wrote poetry

because I had to push a truth out from my womb. Publishing felt as if I was celebrating the messy afterbirth. June Jordan’s Things I Do in the Dark described what poetry was all about for me. I needed to write poetry, but I felt uncomfortable sharing it. After Wicked, I went back to writing in secret and stashing my poems under the bed like Miss Emily.

Eventually the loose manuscript of poems would find their way to a collection, Loose Woman, inspired by Jaime Sabines’s Poemas sueltos. By then I had learned poetry had to be written as if I could not publish it in my lifetime. It was the only way for me to get past the worst censor. Myself.

Several individuals have poked under the bed with brooms and forced my words to light. They are Ted Dvoracek, Carlos Cumpián, Raul Niño, Paul Alexander, Jeffrey Abrahams, Julie Grau, Robin Desser, Sonia Saldívar-Hull, Dagoberto Gilb, Joy Harjo, Brad Morrow, Samantha Chang, Tey Diana Rebolledo, Geneva Gano, Sergio Troncoso, José Antonio Rodríguez, Rachel Morgan, Quincy Troupe, Martín Espada, Anne Halley, Paul Jenkins, Norma Alarcón, Gary Soto, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Luis J. Rodríguez, Diana Delgado, Tyler Meier, Rita Dove, and especially, this book’s editor, John Freeman who, like Mrs. Something, transmogrified me. For lack of a better word, John, I will call this light you give me grace.

I thank the entire team at Alfred A. Knopf / Vintage / Vintage Español /

Penguin Random House, who birthed this book into spectacular being: John Freeman, of course, Reagan Arthur, Jordan Pavlin, LuAnn Walther, Deborah Garrison, Sarah Perrin, Kevin Bourke, Gabrielle Brooks, Todd Doughty, Pei Loi Koay, Emily Mahon, Marisa Melendez, Matthew Sciarappa, Demetris Papadimitropoulos, Alexandra Torrealba, Silvia Matute, Rita Jaramillo, Monica Delgado, Indira Pupo, Maylin Lehmann, Iris McElroy, Denise Lee, and Leah Jackson. I thank as well the unnamed word-workers, who print, pack, ship, and send these words out and out into the world. A special shout-out to the booksellers, librarians, and readers. May patron saint San Juan de Dios bless and protect you all.

Since forever, my highest aspiration has been to receive blurbs from the writers I most admire. Appreciation to my colleagues Dorothy Allison, Jan

Beatty, Marilyn Chin, Martín Espada, Rigoberto González, Joy Harjo, Luis J.

Rodríguez, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, and Javier Zamora.

Gracias a la reina Flor Garduño por el uso de su foto perfecta La nopala para la portada. Gracias a las magas Michèle Desfrenne y Astrid Hadad por ser mis duendes. A mi madrina de letras Elena Poniatowska, eterna gratitud.

Un tambache de amor a todas.

Gratitude to Macondo, especially to the board, for devout work of service and inspiration.

Gratitude to poet John Olivares Espinoza, my poetry coach for over a decade. You are as humble as a Buddhist master and as wise. Thank you for your tender care.

Gratitude to Julia Alvarez, whose poetry inspires me to write poetry, and to Denise Chávez and Sherman Alexie, whose performances inspire my performances.

Gratitude to Ellen Riojas Clark, John Phillip Santos, Ito Romo, Garrett Mormando, José Rubén De León, Roland Mazuca, Bill Sánchez, and Reggie Scott Young; muy queridos todos.

Alebrije poet Liliana Valenzuela has worked alongside me for three decades as amiga, translator, and Spanish teacher. Poetry is the most difficult genre to write, and the most difficult genre to translate. For wizardry and speed, I am always indebted to the marvelous Lili.

Dwellings as beautiful as their settings give me creative inspiration. I remember I wrote “Smith’s Supermarket…” during a Taos residency at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in the autumn of 2009. Other homes that roused me to write: Blanca Uzeta and Cavanaugh O’Leary’s Casa O’Leary in San Miguel de Allende; Tey Diana Rebolledo and Michael Passi’s adobe home in Albuquerque; Flor Garduño’s house in Tepoztlán; Susan Bergholz and Bert Snyder’s Casa Magdalena in Lamy, New Mexico. Lionel and Kathy Sosa’s casita in San Antonio, Texas.

Amigas Nancy Traugott, Lourdes Portillo, Nely Galán, Ruth Behar, Jasna Karaula Krasni, and Gayle Elliott heard some of these poems aloud for the first time. Poet/translator Mary Jane White drove me across Iowa in a silver Jaguar on a season’s first snowfall, on a morning that sparkles in my memory

even now. Gratitude to Dennis Mathis, Erasmo Guerra, Cristina Gámez, María Belén Nilson, and Ester Hernández. Gracias to all for ánimo y amistad.

Dennis Mathis, Charlie Hall, and Tim Wheat generously offered their ears while I was proofing these poems. My assistant, the lovely Yvette Marie DeChávez, worked meticulously with me on this manuscript, and la furia de la frontera, Macarena Hernández, offered, as ever, her unflagging labor whenever I needed her. A Ernesto Hilario Espinoza y Eunice Misraim Chávez Muñoz aquí en México, mil gracias por su enorme ayuda que me permitió escribir.

Composer Derek Bermel and my brother musician/artist Henry “Keeks”

Cisneros inspired my song poems. Kiki transformed two of my poems to music, performing them for Conjunctions: 75, Dispatches from Solitude, Fall 2020. Pura alegría.

I must recognize my sisters-in-law Silvia Zamora Cisneros and Elizabeth Ann Cisneros for being both family and fans all these years. Thank you for this beautiful, generous gift.

Remarkably, I carried my literary agent Susan Bergholz’s business card in my wallet during the year of my near death. Bookseller/saint Richard Bray brought us together, but I didn’t contact Susan until the following year when I was reborn. This collaboration transformed my life. I am ever amused, amazed, and grateful at the plot lines conceived by Divine Providence.

My new literary agent Stuart Bernstein I suspect must write poetry in secret. How else to account for his sensitivity when editing my work. I know this manuscript could not have come out from hiding without his kind encouragement and guidance.

A los antepasados que me llamaron a México, al pueblo que me inspira, a la Virgen de Guadalupe que me ilumina a cada paso, doy gracias.

Church bells are ringing as I write this. Some sound like church bells, and some sound like a tin cup banged across prison bars, and some like an angry mother clanging un comal. I have winnowed these poems from three decades, two countries, and too many houses. In seventeen days I will be sixty-seven.

It is time I let them go.

3rd December 2021

Casa Coatlicue

San Miguel de Allende

Guanajuato, México

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. Internationally acclaimed for her poetry and fiction, which has been translated into more than twenty-five languages, she is the recipient of numerous awards, including NEA Fellowships in both poetry and fiction, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Texas Medal of the Arts, the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. She has fostered the careers of many aspiring and emerging writers through two nonprofits she founded: Macondo Writers, celebrating its twenty-seventh anniversary in 2022, and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation, which operated for fifteen years. As a single woman, Cisneros made the choice to have books instead of children. Her literary papers are preserved at the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University. Currently she lives in San Miguel de Allende. Cisneros is a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico and earns her living by her pen.

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Document Outline

Other Titles

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Mujer sin vergüenza

Tea Dance, Provincetown, 1982

Creed

At Fifty I Am Startled to Find I Am in My Splendor

Remedy for Social Overexposure

Never Mention to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas

K-Mart, San Antonio, Texas, 1986

Smith’s Supermarket, Taos, New Mexico, at the Fifteen-Items-or-Less Checkout Line

Noche, La Casa Magdalena, Lamy, New Mexico

After a Quote from My Father

Wasps in the Buddha Bell

Calendar in the Season of the Pandemic

In Case of Emergency

Instructions for My Funeral

It Occurs to Me I Am the Creative/Destructive Goddess Coatlicue

Cielo sin sombrero

Cielo con sombrero

Sky Wearing a Hat

Jarcería Shop

El Jardin, End of Day

I Should Like to Fall in Love with a Burro Named Saturnino

Figs

Neither Señorita nor Señora

Our Father, Big Chief in Heaven

This in the News Unmentioned

El Hombre

Adelina Cerritos

Te A—

A Boy with a Machine Gun Waves to Me

Tepoztlán

Señor Martín

Swallows, Guanajuato Airport

Cielo sin sombrero

Sky Without a Hat

Police Blotter, May 5th, 2013, San Miguel de Allende

Quiero ser maguey en mi próxima vida

I Want to Be a Maguey in My Next Life

Cantos y llantos

Back Then or Even Now

Canto for Women of a Certain Llanto

Washing My Rebozo by Hand

Having Recently Escaped from the Maws of a Deathly Life, I Am Ready to Begin the Year Anew

Four Poems on Aging

Making Love After Celibacy

Lullaby

Instructions for Vigiling the Dying

Exploding Cigar of Love

God Breaks the Heart Again and Again Until It Stays Open

Mrs. Gandhi

Poem Written at Midnight

Year of My Near Death

Letter to Pat Little Dog After Losing Her Son

Día de los Muertos

Buen árbol / A Good Tree

Cisneros sin censura

Mount Everest

Variations in White

In My Little Museum of Erotica

My Mother and Sex

Stepping on Shit

Naranja completa

You Better Not Put Me in a Poem

Woman Seeks Her Own Company

Pilón

When in Doubt

Acknowledgments

A Note about the Author