to the world, biblically or not
when one is born to the border
and its crossings. Men suffocating
in trucks, women tough with children.
All the folklore in academia,
la Llorana wailing for her children
murdered by her own hands,
all esoteric beauty something untouchable
amidst dishwater; the wages of work
are death. The wages of sin abundant
draperies and pearls about a small neck.
Georgia, I imagine green and lush,
Alabama, something of ivy and willows,
Louisiana, streams of grass and waters
merging into the Gulf. Destiny
rafts the muddy rivers of our lives.
Langston Hughes sang his muddy river,
his muck and misplacement.
I am a displaced metaphor, a misunderstood
construction of consequence for the desert peoples
brown and happy as windy sands peck their faces--
I always wanted more than weeds,
tumbleweeds, miles of loose sand rushing the air
and sandy hills. I always wanted more than acceptance
and all is vanity.
I misused myself in want, ran to the west
and found rivers bubble with a white rush.
Lakes are clear and naked swimmers dive
deep into coves of quietude and resolve.
The desert is a place without want. It is the plastic bags
of shoppers on smoky buses, the shadowy man running
across the highway. Running as if he were unreal,
as if he were no longer human.
So, I return to the stickers in my socks, the mean
mean cry. Today, I am weary of poetry. Weary of this mist,
this conglomerate of happy criticism.
I return to the crude language of my ancestors,
to the beauty of loss, so sullen in blue sky
which always rises after the clearing
and the settling of want.
(First appeared in Margie.)