poem from a foreign country, thinking a little about top forty

I stood singular still and watched a crow at the fishmarket/
his eyebaubles his walk caffeinated invented him, framed him/
a small and important old gentleman, black black suit/

I felt under this seeing a pebbly significance/the stumbling of this crow a shrine which reminds to forget/but I remembered you who I also watched and who also invented me with watching, with why does she stare at birds

I felt this catching of sight, your making of me
but you needed my fishmarket visions so little

And this is how I arrived--past iron gate down alley of carsounds/
room selected way pointed behind hallways staircases heavy locks and there a bed/
quilted, dotted with a succinct pillow, blue suitcases stratified, an open window/
I watched the passage of an unfamiliar sun across the strange wall of afternoon.

And became a traveler, a witness of comings and goings. Outside to the left of my new windowI found your broad brown face housing certainty and distance which drew closed/
between your black black brows with each rushing crackling drag
of a cigarette. Then I thought I knew the meaning of drags.

teacup collection

--
we dropped
with a burst
pronounced from the clouded grave
cement prisms sloped from your porch
hit the toothy sidewalk
into the gap
here
water could touch us

--
we fixed our scarves
around our heads
(proud of our waves
you and i both) but
we waddled
shrubs old women
laughed as sisters
though
i never told you i dreamed
i kissed a man with black hair smelling
thick of apples
and met you in the morning
deposited by the peculiar
universe

--
you tell me
under great palmate maples
over sidewalk tectonics
how afraid you were as a boy
i take you firm in my palms
your arms veined
i marvel at your devotion to suffering
i never eat
you titter but
this is you precise
a thin man now who lets feet soak (mine
safe in tall boots)
for the sake of what we call rain


--
denim sucks at the backs of our knees
we holler in dirty wet
overtake frowning facades on front street
(i wish to be a thing tiny and sexless
to love in ways
being a woman can't confuse)
perspiration
stuck about bricks
lulled now
we see your places
(a desert sky flanked with a thousand crested sparrows!
a graygreen riverbed tells moonwort daydreams!)

--
past lignin-flap screen
around coffee noise
we inhale to earwax intimacy
we descend together into teacups
sip steam
hot fogs
yellow letters
we remembered from faraway summers
now
i see unburied
black scratches you've grown a beard
ragged patches of pink skin
textbooks and telephones slide wanton from my palms
exhale
and shoulderbones
now
this only thing happened in the world

Letter to Jorge Teieller from the USA

My grandfather never sang to the black roots of almonds.
He never spent cold days, as I do, in rocking chairs.
I write in India ink; his home was the city. His garage held a truck.
He endured the wind driving, elbows tucked in, cigar lit, cursing Ike.
My grandfather was an orphan and an immigrant. The morning was a vast chunk of Kansas.
A plow. A bottle of whiskey.
Those years even God didn't know him.

My father appeared one day in Chevy grease in the California garage.
Grandfather went on playing poker in the dining room with smoke and linoleum.
My father sat alone with Orbison records while other boys tortured stray cats in the alley.
Put tiny mirrors on their shoes to catch the secrets under girls' skirts.
Father dreamed of being an accountant, of seeing the Badlands from an RV window.
He watched the news. I was born between programs.

I tried to touch earth but only found the wet sod of suburbs
which sounded like basketball hoops and GNR tapes.
I never heard desire in that dirt, food or destiny or maps or dreams,
never knew the language to speak with onions.
I knew telephones as small as minnows, things that were inexplicable but somehow sustained us,
I was told, but still felt despair, saw my parents almost die of silence in front of the television.
I watched storm clouds; felt drawn to sparks; took lovers.
I go on placing my hands in every stream, crouching under pine boughs in the snow, testing berries.
I look for things that I can touch: there is no other escape.
I will sew my daughters' dresses.
A hearth will be lit.