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