WINTER
In the evening we
carry down our dead
they leave our hands willingly
above
Dog Star watches
cold, white
as on ancient evenings,
Dog Star—
bringer of rain.
SPRING
Listen to the grass
leaning
soft green
through the fence
singing.
Listen to the green
crawling
slowly
away from the yard
where the bones lie—
under their feet,
under the dandelion's,
the yellow dandelion's feet—
listening.
SUMMER
Sometimes we take
our measure from the dead
as from a stone that
sits unchanged
amid the changing seasons
like a departed shore
the dead mark
how far we’ve come
through mystery
and how far
we’ve yet to go.
FALL
—Solve et coagula
The small things go first
over the blue salt
edge of the world
followed by a
deconstruction
of their tracks
by the wind
that covers
and uncovers
the same finger bone
my own
where it fell
in confusion
trembling
at the slow moving
wheel
of the desert's rim.
asha
Dead Reckoning
For Joe
La Tormenta
Yucatán Peninsula
for Lee
for Lee
This is how the world was
lightning on the rim
and a small boat
moving away forever
lantern swinging
over a veiled sea.
We had the world to ourselves.
I was the veils,
You were the boat.
You were the lantern.
I was the swinging.
You were the lightening.
I was the waves,
You were the sea.
I was forever.
We were the horizon.
You were moving away.
We were the storm.
asha
Border Crossing
... excerpt from Obra Inconcluso — Mexico
Leaving my language behind, I enter the labyrinth. Its streets are narrow and old and crowded with small fruit-colored buildings made of mud and stone. Here dogs speak in tongues and saints make deals with passers-by. I am greeted by a cockroach who kindly explains their price, plastic flowers and bottled flame. I see within the wicker shadows of their tiny huts how each saint stands stoic and faithful before their candles and the litter of past offerings; blackened, shattered glass and dusty clods of petals and wax but, at the hour the church bells ring, they wince in their solitude. I ask the cockroach if anyone else is in the business. The dogs, she answers, adding that I best consider carefully before choosing among them. Before I can ask more she scuttles off, disappearing into the crack of a flame red wall.
asha
Reminiscence
I am sure it was you
looking back at me
hand reaching out.
I knew you would come,
you waited there
just below the surface—
moon over my shoulder—Hello Moon.
the only way I remember you is sadly.
I hesitated as though it would be too easy
to touch your close-enough-to-touch face,
then there was no time left,
just a dream almost breaking through—
almost
one last touch
from the world
beyond the watery sky.
asha
Desert Crossing
This dark blood that binds us
cheats us of our truth, brother
only a desert's dead center
can compare
but this creeping emptiness
like a desert devouring itself
oasis after oasis
has a true ring, does it not
a solidness, a comfort
we survivors can depend on
come on, need me brother
without a truth
no heartbreak is enough
I seem like one going
to meet a lover
but behind my eyes—
sighing, shifting ashes.
asha
Skin Trade
Mother,
There is always a market for flesh
even now
sunlight in thorns
they are hungry for us
make ordinary what is not
dying
the innocent know this
they reach back
future to memory
faces repeating themselves
a lime-green inch worm
toiling over jumbled foot stones
in the membrane
the breathing cage
there is no short cut to the old cities
in the necessary air
I am sitting in a chair
imagine me
I move my right hand
move yours from the dirt
touch me
it is easy
this regeneration
a habit natural as spring
we the living have come to
expect it
you know it is a gift
the last thing
the dying pup saw from the heap
after they skinned everything
but her eyelashes.
asha
Pele
Somewhere nearby a fly is the last
friendly voice of earth where—
with broken pieces glinting
everywhere—
and unbraided fire hair
the literal eye shuts—
lured beyond by what
cannot be seen—
what has not begun
stretches out—
what cannot be imagined—
takes shape under my feet—
the bloody red sulfuric
sweaty birth of future worlds.
I never wanted to return,
she says,
never wanted to leave
the white plume—
the stinging rain.
But we come back
from the boiling point
of hurricanes. We—
walk back together
over burnished glass,
Anna Sadhorse
from the fire-eating sea
and me, back past
tiny ferns busy in their
grottoes digesting
the volcano
within the thin
moist shadows
caught in the upheaval’s
crust.
It has never been so fine,
here—where the foot
does the thinking
finds momentary
balance before
the body falls—
again forward
into unforeseeable
circumstance.
Pick any thread
from the loom of chaos,
she whispers. The wildest will do.
It is our job making sense of nothing.
asha
Animal Life
For every prayer
there is an equal
and opposite prayer.
She was curled
in the corner
and too starved
to flinch when
they tossed her
in the trash
where she died
three days later
pupless and
full of milk.
asha
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