Deja vu

After Susan Stewart’s “Apple”

If I could come back

from the dead, I would.

A tinge of sin on

my cheeks, unclean

unchaste, you’d say.

That juicy redness

that you find in me.

There is so little difference

between an apple and a kiss.

I’d come back for

nothing but you

and me, standing

and staring

at opposite ends of that

icy street, as I breathe in

your eyes of angled

cold, your veins

already rising from

the paling blood in mine –

or across

an empty park

in the blue light of

twilight, when your still

figure looks navy blue

and hooded, like

a dream that I killed.

A body has a season, though

it may not know it, and damage

will bloom in beauty’s seed.

I’d come back, just a hollow pipe

again, like you made me,

to try to whistle

across that empty park

and suddenly feel the distances

shrinking rapidly again

until the whistle is silenced.

COATLICUE

Seething in serpent’s skirt and necklace of hearts
She walks unseen in the shadow of Tenochtitlan;
Queen of the red earth, her presence is everywhere.
She stands watch over the horde of humans
Ascending the temple born to feed her hunger,
Born out of trembling arms and steady mouths.
“Oh Divine Goddess of Birth and Death,
We unleash the blood from our tongues
For you have let your own blood run
Till your body ran dry and you were reborn.”
“We offer you a kin of flesh and blood,
Tear her with your claws and be contented.
Our farmer hands have threshed the corn;
Day and night we have worked to eat
But only you can hold the blow of disaster.”
“We are the servants of you the Gods,
Bowing to the children of Ometecuhtli,
For you are the predeterminers of Destiny.”
She watches silently their gloried ritual,
She toasts to her fellows from the Pantheon.
These that clung to her heavy breasts at first,
Nourished and replenished by her flowing milk,
Now kneel in deference to her duality,
Now prostrate in full surrender to the deity
Who consumes their bodies and wears their skin.

Sweet Sundays

He makes me breakfast in bed:
Toast with scrambled eggs
Cooled by a glass of orange juice
Every Sunday.
We drawl through the hours;
Sprawling deliberately, they’re ours
To spend in any which way;
It is Sunday.
And he talks with his arms;
Unbuttoning boyish charms;
Tousles my hair and laughs,
“It’s Sunday.”
I shake him off and flee;
Now I’m caught, now I’m free;
It’s our game of cat and mouse
Of Sundays.
We break off rose from stem
We dawdle in green mayhem
Amidst ferns, bushes gone wild
On this lazy Sunday.
I breathe in his sweaty scent;
Gasping as I lay still: spent.
The darkness dips warm and content
In the wine of our Sunday.