Brother Sleep, page 3
my night’s waiting for Sleep
to carry you out of the bedroom,
my first lover outside, ready
to slip in. Firm
smell of his
breath on my nostrils. Screech
of the bed & your breath
steaming from the other side
of the room. What dreams
we interrupted with my lover’s ending,
that liquid hum. What dreams
when I turned to see you seeing
our limbs under the blankets. What questions
you never asked. Your silence the blank space
I yearned for that night, now
the white slit of air inside my ribs—
BLACK PALACE BLUES
México City’s Lecumberri Palace, known as the “black palace,” served as a prison from 1900 to 1976. Its “J” section was reserved to imprison gay men, infamous for being used in the detainment of 41 gay men arrested in the dance of 1901.
A. My skin, for instance, blue for a lack of moon:
B. Volcanic stone highlighting cells
C. Blue like Marcelo’s lungs spraying the floor
D. Or the lilacs in my mother’s backyard when they hauled me
E. Out: por favor, llévenselo por atrás. Que no lo vea la gente.
F. Blue like Marcelo’s scrotum, which I learned to kiss inside these walls.
G. Or my spit as a child
H. Eating ripe moras with my grandfather. I suckle tears from the walls the color of ink—
I. Blue of our skin lashed for kissing, for not answering back (our last name) when called (by our first).
J. For no reason other than being. Here. I’m released. I’m blue all over. In seven years, I’ll be dead in the alley of a border town & buried under a bed of lilacs, a black word spray-painted onto my gravestone.
GLOSSARY FOR WHAT YOU LEFT UNSAID: CONCAVE
concave, n.
a. a hollow: a cavity: a hiding place: inside the shell of a car: inside the tire: or the seats’ gray tapestry: in the lining of a jacket: in the acidy purse of a stomach: the white powder wadding sixty rubber condoms: downed with milk: or pushed into the red velvet lining of an anus: raw flesh: pocketed breasts & buttocks: hollowed out & refilled: †b. I cross & recross borders: full: & empty myself on cold metal beds: or cold porcelain: each time the long cylinder of a gun’s gullet sings: echoes of shed bullets: c. because these things are put inside my body: I’m distinctly female in your mind: you keep a gun in the bottom drawer of your room: for safety: here the glass pipe: the pocket mirror: & what I once furrowed down my esophagus: make a line: piston the lightness of smoke: make another line—
—I’m sorry: but my sister heard a rupture in her stomach this morning: the rubber’s softest whisper: undoing: the rest: of her life.
MISADVENTURE
To be born
Into the Río
Bravo’s current
When the moon
Is high & pink.
To be so small
& round Mother
Mistakes me
For a stone.
To grow up
Without a father.
To blame the fact
Of my faggotry
On being fatherless.
To thank God,
That infinite
Equation, for being
Fatherless.
To know Death
Has two gold teeth
In the front
Of his mouth.
To see him
The night my brother
In his glittering
Fever points
At the corner.
To that grin.
To love a man
Who is a father.
To share his mouth
With his wife.
For an instant.
To lose a friend,
The curving temple
Of his body.
To my touch.
To break
My small
Metacarpal
In a handshake.
I’ve lost four
Years in my hiding,
Two houses
To the smell
Of gunpowder,
A loved country
For safety.
I know Death
Is as fat, tall,
& white
As the edge
Of this page.
WHAT LIGHT WANTS
In the dim room, the computer
screen beaming, close-up
of a woman’s lips, the television
loud with songs retelling
David Bowie’s life on film, played
to drown out our flesh,
& moonlight, too, slips in
to take part in our skin,
our softness, this un-
elegant exploration, how we reach
to press our cocks against each other’s
in mutual agreement
this would only happen once, even
when light wants: our bodies,
this path we follow: the pores:
the standing hairs: the salt—
GHOSTING
When you left, the arch
of your body vanished
or swallowed by the desert,
a gray vulture
clawed into the calico couch
where you slept. In daylight
the bird clusters inside
the sponge of a cushion
& sleeps. I sit. I rewatch
shows I first saw
by your side. I feel the bird
breathing beneath me.
At night it perches
on the arm of the sofa
to examine my breath.
Without you, I often
have dreams of dying
in the desert, choking
on cacti. Of spines & serpents
& the vast & yellow sky
that is your absence. Every time,
the sky spills
into my waking & I
find the vulture
hovering above.
LOS OLVIDADOS
El CRAEMAC is an asylum for the mentally ill at the outskirts of
Ciudad Juárez.
At the desert’s edge, a man dangling
large hoop earrings shakes my hand, presents himself
as Juan Gabriel, swears the singer in the TV, in the mariachi outfit, stole
his identity, concealed him in this dry patch of land
where the stench of urine fumes the corners, where he sings
in a high, uneven pitch: soy honesta con él
& contigo / a él lo quiero & a ti te he olvidado—
|
Summer exhausts salt
from our pores—riddles us in strange dreams—
at the peak of the season’s heat, the violent
are segregated into rooms, stunned
with hypodermics. We scavenge our arms
for sores, the desert air limiting:
we inhale it: the mountain cacti, the spines
clustering our sinuses. We exhale smoke.
|
& again
there’s rice
for dinner
& supper.
|
& another winter
outlines the cracks
where our bones
snapped
two decades ago.
|
Daily, for years, a woman clutches the edge
of the iron barrier separating the city. She awaits
her daughter’s return. Children
sprint across the sidewalk, outside, rattle
the iron & her fingers.
Her eyes widen. Her lungs
swell for the longest minute: a gush
of wind: the desert rippling inside her.
SINNER
Forgive me, Brother: I sinned. I laughed
at the joke with the gay priest & the altar boy, missing
the punch line: it’s 2018. People still think gay = pedo.
In my old bedroom I lit incense sticks after fucking Abner
so you wouldn’t know. I played straight most of my high school
years. When I think of Abner, I think
of that 90’s Nickelodeon show which played in the background.
My fist siphoned his white
boxers until the cloth darkened. I tasted salt.
At Sunday school, an older boy named Andy rocked
his hips furiously, walking. Behind him, boys shadowed
the sway. Laughed. When he asked me if it was true,
if Abner & I were lovers, I knuckled his face, bent
cartilage, his snot smeared on my fingers. I liked his face
collapsing under my blow. I liked the other boys
cheering, behind us, their masculine claps convinced
of the man I was, my red hands unfolded & ready
to praise God.
PENTECOST, 2006
In the Baptist temple, the cross
hangs behind the podium,
bodiless. My polluted river
of thought drowns
the pastor’s sermon—: this wood
lacking flesh: the exposed abs
of Jesus in my Catholic church
bleeding & fastened
to that symbol. I confess:
I carry desire in my bones.
A friend crosses & uncrosses
his legs beside me, bangs
the tip of his shoe
against my sole, & I turn
to face him, catch first
the pink scar stitched
above the eyebrow. I’m here
because he knows
I like the tough fruit in a man’s
throat, & he wants,
like all good Christians want,
to change this. I’m here
because ten years ago, in his mother’s lake
house, we shared the top
mattress of a bunk bed, beating
glow-in-the-dark planets
on the wood ceiling. Late
that morning, I pretended
to sleep. He ran his fingers up my thigh,
filled me with blood—
Ran. Filled. —I’m here because I want
a change of tense.
He chews gum. His mandible
speckles the air. He sings
one last song of worship, shoots
one last & boring glance
at me, & we scatter
out the averting parking lot
to the rest of our lives.
GENEALOGY
This is one of seven lies: I grew to love
the absence. Months before I was born, my mother
says, a man came home to dig out the dead
maple tree in the backyard. Says when she was seven
the branch that held her in a swing split, like her knee,
with the fall. I took
my shadow for a sibling
for the longest time. I carried the dead
in my tonsils. One dull midnight
in August, absence
boiled my skin to purple seeds: fevers
high enough to stretch the horizon on my face.
My grandmother pressed the cold
eggshell against my skin. I felt her
prayers shift the air, the candle’s burning
in the nightstand, her rosary crackling as she broke
the tainted yolk
into the glass. Mira, she said,
& I looked: yellow leaking the red
dot of absence which I bore: my mother’s
dead tree: loose soil in the backyard:
my father’s face looking back.
BLUE INSOMNIA
Stubborn scrape of vine against glass, my window’s bone shutter, & the hymn my grandfather’s grandfather
clock intones. Sounds all night—water running—
a bluebird warbles in the trees, & in my mouth: the taste of pennies.
|
Corpses outside my window tap their fingers on the cold glass. Figures blur in rain. & there—there—my grandfather’s face trickles from the past.
|
Three black hours I keep tonguing my teeth for copper. There’s the shape of a coin under the mattress. I feel it against my vertebrae. I lift the bedding. Find: air. Dry flowers. A black beetle crawling. A spring popping fabric. A rusted razor I used to cut myself in high school.
|
Grandfather slipped quarters between his molars & bit down. Wanted the evenings for himself. Locked the bedroom door
upon which I knocked & knocked until mother found me half asleep on the floor with reddened knuckles.
|
When he lived in a house near a river, Grandfather told me one day we’d build a boat from the old sycamore & sail
to the Gulf of Mexico. I could sleep. & in my sleep
I traveled the country’s vein. I waived past friends & friends of friends, collecting coins in my pockets. I grew heavy with gold.
|
I woke up sinking.
|
Some nights I want a mouth to kiss, want to fill myself with as much of the world. Like my grandfather, I want to be torn open with as much of the world.
|
Last night I found a quarter in the gutter & took it
to my mouth. Because I want & want. Because the sky
lacks moon, the rain lacks song, & hunger
hangs a hyacinth at the mouth of my stomach.
4
GLOSSARY FOR WHAT YOU LEFT UNSAID: CITIZEN
citizen, n.
a boy like my brother
crosses a border
to be safe
cuts a pear in half
remembers his family
in Honduras
harvesting pears
his brother
gilded with sweat
in the brown orchard
his father’s skin
raw with sunburns
his mother asleep
in the sickbed
in the old house
he dreams
of his childhood
the tall gate & the tree
he wakes up
in a bunk bed
at the shelter
wet & feverish
this boy who
like my brother
doesn’t want to be
a flatline—
citizen, adj.
D tells me the story of his scar: he’s ten & climbing a tree. Picking fruit
from its branches. What he remembers of the fall is the fear
for his weight, the breakability
of wood & bone & gravity’s unmerciful
persistence. He doesn’t remember the snap, the passing of days, only rising
to his brother’s face numb in the corner of the bedroom, & after, not being
able to stand, walk to the restroom, his head
a spigot, spinning ten days straight. Again, D reminds me
of my brother in this story. I imagine his brother as my distant
self, cleansing the stitched wound that plunges his hairline. My brother
wore his scars inside of him. His skin, smooth brightness. I miss him
most after D leaves the shelter: my brain bears a selfish space—
citizen, v.
dusk over tornillo—:the skyscatteringsparrows
throbs& like asha blanketof dark bodies
cascades
on the white tarpof the tents
LULLABY, AFTER YOU LEFT THE IMMIGRANT SHELTER
I think of you again at the tail end
of February, after the cage & the tent,
after the fever & the dream about the dream, after 60
bunk beds in a room & 60 blurred faces
suspended in the dust of the desert,
after the sleepless
winter & the recurring infection.
I think of you
standing in this country
of barbed wire, this country of copper, this
steeped hill you climbed to plant
on it your dream. I want for you
your own bed in your private
room in a house where your brother opens
his arms after the dream comes in shades
of blue from the land of blue
with such longing for the trees
you climbed
as a child, for your mother’s
lips pressed to your forehead
for your father’s rugged palm cupping
the back of your neck.
ANTI-ELEGY IN THE VOICE OF DEATH
December—another death
rattle babbles out
a boy’s pharynx, his weight
numbing his mother’s arms,
hot hunger
in her breath steaming the street.
She’ll awaken
in an hour, the gap
between her nose & lip
raw with frostbite. She’ll discern
a new lightness in her son’s
body, the loss
of something old inside of him,
& in the thin sword of sun
she’ll know, even before
she attempts to shake his body
awake: she’s no longer
a mother. She’ll begin
yearning for this past state
of being, plant a black hole
inside her. People are strange
like this. She’ll consume
the hollow left in the carcass, nurture it
like a new offspring, & call it
grief. See, a body is just
a body—is just
