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.