Gallery of an Old Woman

This is me at fifty, prying open
my chest with both hands,
mandorla doorway to a cavern 
of crumbled yellow Legos.
Watch them fall out. My children 
step on them in the dark.

I’m not quite beautiful.
Motherly mustache, single 
whisker, necklace of thorns, 
I wear my grandmother’s
long dead hummingbirds
like forgotten songs.

On the shelf is a spiral
shell, one my daughter
brought back from Spain.
When I miss her, I hold it
in my palm. Where does
the inside of the spiral end?

Is it one-eyed, eyeless,
this love for my children,
now grown? Where do I look 
or swim, my wings, 
my webbed feet, full 
of hollow bones?

Two monkeys chained 
to the window sill of my eyes
ignore the boats. Instead,
I’m lost in clouds—
floating white blood cells 
saving me by fading.

with thanks to the following works of art:
Two Monkeys, 1562, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Yellow, 2007, by Nathan Sawaya
Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940, by Frida Kahlo
Decoy Study (Duck), 2014, by Maskull Lasserre
Sky Above Clouds III, 1963, by Georgia O’Keeffe
White Shell with Red, 1938, by Georgia O’Keeffe

The Scream

Time's receding bridge
brought us here,

alive, from the bellies
of our dead. 

Wide eyed, mouth 
open, bald,

you hold your head
like a burnt out bulb.

Give me your hands.
Let’s trade faces,

cradle one another’s chin
while sky screams red.

Blue water below
whispers flow.

We jump in,
swim for distant boats

whose purpose
is unknown.

Corazón de Trinidad Reading

If You Were Here We'd Have to Cook

a prose poem for my Crestone Poetry Festival beloveds

If you were here we’d have to cook. Bob’s Diner, Crestone's only greasy spoon, is gone for good. Tshering and Ling sold The Desert Sage, now in the throes of a facelift, and it’s been said their famous burger is on retreat somewhere trying to be chocolate. Scott and Ava’s Bliss Cafe aka the Crestone Brewery, home of the prickly pear marg with a shot of local piñon hydrosol, and Mandala Pizza, maker of the Close Encounter Calzone, are both closed, and the Silver Lotus, that new little food truck with tasty San Luis Valley-style Asian fusion, isn’t open in the cold. And Buck’s Wood-fired Pizza, also an outdoor affair, keeps the strangest days and random hours when brother Seth’s not hunting or hugging his kid. Hungry? too tired to cook? Check the hours on Facebook. You likely won’t get lucky, unless you like the folky Mystic Rose next door. What’s that? It’s closed? Hm. And Cloud Station (this omnivore recommends the paleo bowl and GF carrot cake) closes at 1 or 2, so around 4, I’d introduce you to Diana at the Merc, our little grocery store. 

If you were here we’d have to cook. 

In the A.M. I’d whisk a lumpless matcha with maple syrup and a splash of 2%. I promise not to scorch the leaves. Or stovetop a Bialetti pot of single shot of espresso if you prefer, and fry a green egg from our feathered girls (please don’t tell the POA about our secret flock), toast a slice of Everett and Anoushka’s homemade Mountain Mama Complet or Integral, pile it open-faced with arugula of unknown origin, a dash of salt. Peel a tangerine from some Florida orchard (try not to think too hard about that state).

For lunch we could stack a sandwich on the same bread (or gluten free in the freezer, Laurie)—maybe with some Scanga sliced chicken and cheddar from Salida (sadly, not Saleeda), nestled under some Elephant Cloud organic mixed greens that drove in on a truck in bulk this morning. Toss in some baby carrots and a handful of cheap Voodoo chips, our guilty pleasure, on the side. Or forget the bread—this could be a salad instead. I’d whip up some ginger dressing with the old Crestone Brewery recipe a cook slipped me pre-Covid.

If you were here, we’d have to cook.

Come dark, if Dorell had time to marinate the ribs, he’d fire up the Traeger, blow your mind with his famous barbecue. And the next night, he’d panko and air fry some chunked avocados and catfish fillets, stir up his chili lime sour cream, shred more cheddar and fresh cilantro. I’d oil up the cast iron and warm the tortillas. Best fish tacos in town. For dessert, we’d blue torch the creme brûlée I baked earlier in the day, wasting the whites of all those eggs.

If we’re lucky, Julie will have brought more of what’s left of the liquor from Ziggies, oldest blues bar in Denver (man, I miss it), and you can even sit on two old Ziggies bar stools in my kitchen, reminisce those bluesy poem fests. We’d shoot some tequila, laugh too loud, peel a Peruvian mango (no stringy Mexicano), available here only in Febrero, so smooth, muscular, juicy, and watch those poets from Albuquerque feed each other slice by slice on the tongue, communion minus the body of Christ.

If you’re too drunk to walk or find your way through our Baca Grande maze to your air-bnb bed, don’t worry, one of us will drive you. Don’t forget to look up as you stumble out into the valley night, up the steps. More stars than you have ever seen will suck off your face, swallow you whole, spit out the stone of your dark soul, and you will want to write about it before you lay your head on the pillow. 

Peripatetic

If you were here, we’d take the trail behind my home.
We’d duck when piñon branches snag our hair
and ponder cactus sleeping deep beneath the snow.
If you were here, we’d walk the trails behind my home.
Like dogs, our hearts would chase wild rabbits into poems
and howl soft clouds of grief into the mountain air.
If you were here, we’d walk the trail behind my home.
We’d bow when piñon branches touch our hair.

Marigolds and Toadflax

Just outside the chicken run rests a crisp bed 
of marigolds (useful pest deterrents, but I prefer
their sister, calendula). Volunteers, each year 
they seed the bed with gold. I suppose that’s fine. 
Nearby lives yellow toadflax—wild snapdragons, 
also known, appropriately so, as butter and eggs—
invasive, dainty, medievally medicinal, stubborn foe 
a beauty-loving eye always humors early season, 
hungry for green and any bloom, until the hands 
begin unraveling endless lateral roots, rhizomes
smartly breaking off to protect their mother’s
whereabouts—an impossible to find tap root.

Every year these two overtake whatever 
I plant in their stead: heirloom tomatoes, 
potatoes, poppies. Up come delicate interlopers
sipping irrigation hoses. Let us help, they say, 
like toddlers in a kitchen. Let us spread the butter, 
break the eggs! Let us bang the orange tambourines
in this, your favorite quiet corner! By fall the marigolds
win my eyes. Their last bit of color stays still spring.
It is said the dead and gods are drawn to them.
But toadflax! I confess to life, to love, I do let grow 
what chooses growth, until the quiet no, that low 
voice in the bones: I cannot justify invasion anymore. 

Retreat

There stands a child
in no man’s land,
a man in no child’s land.
Hard to say: mine child 
or hologram man, lifting
and flickering every age
from the tilted page of earth.
You shift, pace, calculate
the best route to the other 
side past barbs where
lives the enemy—a mirror, 
a word, a job, a meal, 
a gentle touch, a circle 
of sober men talking.
You whisper retreat,
worried your voice will trip
the wire in the ear,
the brain, take you both
out. Your voice is not 
a hologram. You watch,
wordless, beg the cells
of him made half of you
to defuse, to move,
not move, and the silence
is a yellow fog you’ve
no mask for.

Take You There

There is another book,
quite forgotten now,
or was it a robin?
I was hanging there 
when it hit the window.
Appreciate that particular
detail, the smudge
and fluff on the pane.
Too bad if the action
moves out of the visual
field. The limp bird
can’t tell you, just
take you there.
You shall, neither of you,
have anything of mine,
the red breast said, 
dizzy with haranguing
heart and the whald’s
trivialitah. Some thinkers,
large and small, ignore 
these interruptions,
all a trick, these hoops
and games, to make
you quit, an escape valve,
a low place to sit.