When My Brother Was an Aztec (7 page)

Tonight I am riddled by this thick skull

this white bowling ball zipped in the sad-sack carrying case of my face,

this overwound bone jack-in-the-box,

this Orlando's zero, Oaxacan offering:
cabeza locada, calavera azucarada, clavo jodido, cenote
of Mnemosyne,

this sticky-sweet guilt hive,
piedra blanca del rio oscuro,

this small-town medical mania dispensary, prescribed cranium pill,

this electric blue tom-tom drum ticking like an Acme bomb, hypnotized explosive device, pensive general, scalp-strapped warrior, soldier with a loaded God complex,

this Hotchkiss-obliterated headdress, Gatling-lit labyrinth,

this memory grenade, death epithet, death epitaph, mound of
momento mori,

this twenty-two-part talisman wearing a skirt of breasts, giant ball of
masa,

this god patella in the long leg of my torso, zoo of canines and Blake's tygers,

this red-skinned apple, lamp illuminated by teeth, gang of grin, spitwad of scheme,

this jawbone of an ass, smiling sliver of smite, David's rock striking the Goliath of my body,

this Library of Babel, homegrown Golgotha, nostalgia menagerie, melon festival,

this language mausoleum:
chuksanych iraavtahanm, 'avi kwa'anyay, sumach nyamasav,

this hidden glacier hungry for a taste of titanic flesh,

this pleasure altar, French-kiss sweatshop, abacus of one-night stands, hippocampus whorehouse, oubliette of regret,

this church of tongue, chapel of vengeance, cathedral of thought, bone dome of despair,
plaza del toro y pensamientos,

this museum of tribal dentistry, commodity cranium cupboard, petrified dream catcher,

this sun-ruined basketball I haul—rotted gray along the seams—perpetual missed shot,

this insomnia podium, little bowl in a big fish, brain amphitheater, girl in the moon,

this 3 a.m. war bell,
duende
vision prison,

this single-scoop vanilla head rush, thunder head, fastball, lightning rod,

this mad scientist in a white lab helmet, ghost of Smoking Mirror,

this coyote beacon, calcium corral of pale perlino ponies,

this desert seed I am root to, night-blooming cereus, gourd gone rattle,

this Halloween crown, hat rack, worry contraption, Rimbaud's drunken boat, blazing chandelier,
casa de relámpago,

this coliseum
venatio
: Borges's other tiger licking the empty shell of Lorca's white
tortuga,

this underdressed godhead, forever-hatching egg, this mug again and again at my lips,

and all this because tonight I imagined you sleeping with her

the way we once slept—as intimate as a jaw, maxilla and mandible hot,

in the skin—in love, our heads almost touching.

While she sleeps, I paint

Valencia oranges across her skin,

seven times the color orange,

a bright tree glittering the limestone grotto of her clavicle—

heaving bonfires pulsing each pale limb

like Nero's condemned heretics sparking along Via Appia.

A small stream of Prussian blue I've trickled

down her bicep. A fat red nasturtium

eddies her inner elbow.

Against her swollen palms,

I've brushed glowing halves of avocados

lamping like bell-hipped women in ecstasy.

A wounded Saint Teresa sketched to each breast.

Her navel is a charcoal bowl of figs,

all stem thick with sour milk and gowned

in taffeta the color of bruises.

This to offer up with our flophouse prayers—

God created us with absence

in our hands, but we will not return that way.

Not now, when we are both so capable of growing full

on banquets embroidered by Lorca's gypsy nun.

She sleeps, gone to the needle's gentle rocking,

and I lean out the window, a Horus

drunk on my own scent

and midnight's slow drip of stars.

She has always been more orchard than loved,

I, more bite than mouth.

So much is empty in this hour—

the spoon, still warm, lost in the sheets,

the candle's yellow-white thorn of flame,

a vanishing ribbon of jade smoke,

and night, open as autumn's unfilled basket

as the locusts feast the field.

To be next to you again,

to feel the knob of your pelvic bone,

the door of your hip opening

to a room of light

where a fuchsia blouse hangs

in the closet of a conch shell,

the silhouette of a single red-mouthed bell;

to shut my eyes one more night

on the delta of shadows

between your shoulder blades—

mysterious wings tethered inside

the pale cage of your body—run through

by Lorca's horn of moonlight,

strange unicorn loose along the dim streets

separating our skins;

to be still again knowing

the bow of your spine, the arc of your torso—

a widening road to an alabaster mountain,

a secret path to a cliff overlooking a sea

salt-heavy and laced in foam, a caravel

crushing the swells, parting each

like blue-skirted thighs—lay before me,

another New World shore the gods

have chained me to;

to have you a last time, at last, a touch away,

but then, to not reach out

because my hands are dressed in scarves of smoke;

to lie silent at your side,

an ember more brilliant with each yellow breath,

glowing and dying and dying again,

dreaming a mesquite forest I once stripped to fire

before the sky went ash, undid its dark ribbons,

and bent to the ground, grief-ruined,

as I watch you from the window—

in this city, the city of you, where I am a beggar—

My lover doesn't realize that I've contemplated this scenario,

fingered it like the smooth inner iridescence of a nautilus shell

in the shadow-long waters of many 2 a.m.s—drunk on the brine

of shoulder blades, those pale horns of shore I am wrecked upon,

my mind treading the wine-dark waves of luxuria's tempests—

as a matter of preparedness, and because I do not sleep for fear

of such things or even other things—I've read that the ocean

is a large pot of Apocalypse soup soon to boil over with our sins—

but a thing is a thing, especially if it's a 420-million-year-old beast,

especially if you have wronged so many as I. Beauty, it is simple,

more simple than a beloved can imagine: I wouldn't fight, not kick,

flail, not carry on like one driven mad by the black neoprene wetsuit

of death, not like sad-mouthed, despair-eyed albacore or blubbery

pinnipeds, wouldn't rage the city's flickering streets of ampullae

of Lorenzini, nor slug my ferocious, streamlined lover's titanium

white nose, that bull's-eye of cartilage, no, I wouldn't prolong it.

Instead, I'd place my head onto that dark altar of jaws, prostrated

pilgrim at Melville's glittering gates, climb into that mysterious

window starred with teeth—the one lit room in the charnel house.

I, at once mariner, at once pirate, would navigate my want by those

throbbing constellations. I'd wear those jaws like a toothy cilice,

slip into the glitzy red gown of penance, and it would be no different

from what I do each day—voyaging the salt-sharp sea of your body,

sometimes mooring the ports or sighting the sextant, then mending

the purple sails and hoisting the masts before being bound to them.

Be-loved,
is
loved, what you cannot know is I am overboard for this

metamorphosis, ready to be raptured to that mouth, reduced to a swell

of wet clothes, as you roll back your eyes and drag me into the fathoms.

Tonight, after reading Lorca's
Cante jondo,
I'm ready, dressed

for the procession, for Jesus's wounds, the mob's red dresses.

The Gitana's savage hair charges the night,
nocturno de guerra,
battle-

field of a thousand and one bulls. Their weapons: violent red dresses.

Santa Teresa,
torera,
sacrificed her body to the pale horns. A First

Confession: the split fruit made my thighs buck under my red dress.

What hips!
Péndulos.
And breasts! Clocks adorning the dim hall-

ways of kiss—there is chiming and hands beneath the red dress.

Men crouch, crotches tremulous in the creaking ribcage of a horse.

Who hasn't beat at the gates of Troy for a taste of Helen's red dress?

Cherries dazzle the branches, merciless vermilion gods.

My tongue's a heretic, prostrated. My heart's a red dress.

El colibrí atormentado
thrummed honeysuckle's orange guitar to inferno.

Azaleas wept jealously, bruised knees mourning September's red dresses.

The soldiers' guns were blue tapers. An olive tree, a requiem. Silver

flies riddled the sky. Three men and a poet slept hard in red dresses.

Yesterday's pains scar over. The body is canvas—Picasso's

Guernica:
open palms, questions, the lamp's faded red dress.

We are black poplars at the foot of Sacromonte. They mistake

salt for
azúcar,
these ants devouring us like magic red dresses.

India
, give in to the shells chafing your shadowy thighs and belly

while
Lucía Martínez
builds your evening pyre, your final red dress.

You would have, too.

From that distance the shivering city

fit in the palm of her hand

like she owned it.

She could've blown the whole thing—

markets, dance halls, hookah bars—

sent the city and its hundred harems

tumbling across the desert

like a kiss. She had to look back.

When she did she saw

pigeons glinting like debris above

ruined rooftops. Towers swaying.

Women in broken skirts

strewn along burned-out streets

like busted red bells.

The noise was something else—

dogs wept, roosters howled, children

and guitars popped like kernels of corn

feeding the twisting blaze.

She wondered had she unplugged

the coffeepot? The iron?

Was the oven off?

Her husband uttered,
Keep going.

Whispered,
Stay the course,
or

Baby, forget about it.
She couldn't.

Now a bursting garden of fire

the city bloomed to flame after flame

like hot fruit in a persimmon orchard.

Someone thirsty asked for water.

Someone scared asked to pray.

Her daughters or the crooked-legged angel,

maybe. Dark thighs of smoke opened

to the sky. She meant to look

away, but the sting in her eyes,

the taste devouring her tongue,

and the neighbors begging her name.

I dipped my fingers in the candle wax at church—

white votives shivered in red glass

at the foot of la Virgen's gown—

glowing green-gold.

The fever was fast—

my body ablaze,

I pulled back.

Pale silk curved on each fingertip—

peeling it away was like small gasps.

The candles flickered—

open mouths begging.

Heretics banged at the double door.

Charismatics paraded the aisles,

twirling tapers, flinging Sunday hats.

The Rapture came and went, left

me, the choir's bright robes,

collection baskets like broken tambourines—

What poverty, to never know,

to never slide over the lip of a candle

toward flame—raving to touch

her bare brown toes.

There are certain words

you can't say in airports—

words that mean bomb, blow up, jihad,

hijack, terrorist, terrorism, terrorize,

terrific fucking terror.

small citrus grenades,

laced with steel seeds, rinds lined

with anthrax.

Californians. Floridians

are profiled, picked for full-body

fondlings—everyone knows Florida

is the Axis of Oranges.

All passengers' navels

must be covered or checked in baggage.

Congress is considering mandatory

navelectomies.

Orange Alert paranoia eats away

at the nation like a very hungry caterpillar.

are scared—taking to the streets, picketing,

fighting for
naranjas
as if they were their own

corazones.
They don't understand—

We don't fly,
they say.
If we want to travel

we borrow Tía Silvi's minivan.

telling how to tell

if someone's a terrorist: They tell jokes

with punch lines like:

Orange you glad I didn't say banana?

sized crotches, even those with

man-boobs, are squeezed, bobbled in search

of forbidden fruits—questioned

about stowed-away pomelos, tangelos,

sun-kissed improvised explosive devices,

quarters of tart dynamite.

Homeland Security says,
Convert them all

We're out for blood oranges.

was canceled.

The U.N. expunged

the Oranges for Oil campaign.

It doesn't stop there—

the DOT revolted and wrecked their fleets

of clementine-colored trucks,

school crossing guards are mauled in their tangy vests—

beaten with Walk signs

by packs of anti-mandarin kindergarteners.

O.J. Simpson's in jail.

Orange County is a mere smudge

in the West Coast sky.

Jehovah's Witnesses shake their heads

saying,
We told you so.

In the haze of this early winter,

blue flames engulf the cities.

Wait—what's that you say?

We've been bumped to red alert?

But that's like apples and oranges.