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