Rockslide

She was like a rockslide
in my heart

dust everywhere
her eyes

like small pebbles
lips of sandstone

tongue of flint
only when it was all over

did I find the bruises
and the broken bones.

A La Vibora

He wears the mask
and no one knows that he's a serpent.

The girls in skirts
crown babies.

Chains which bind
are hollow.

Tongue can slip
into the fog of  love.

Flood waters
coil in an arroyo,

and the drowning
taste of pepper.

A serpent can dream
just like a man.

Dust dropped from a vagina
blind the best.

But the soul
can not be shed.

Elegy Del Sweet Pasado

There was a weed in the fields
behind the farmhouse

my mother called la mala mujer
because it would prick you

like a man she said
as she labored sunbonnet covering her head

in the cornfield
chopping away the yerbas

so that the corn
could enjoy

every bit of rain that fell from hell
and later

hacking off the tops
of the cornstalks

when the corn
was ready to be harvested

her machete
glistening in the sun.

The Anthill

The ants
had taken over my lover

my angel
like a crunch of spit

her Navy blue eyes
along the trail

seed of the moon
on a star

there was always
going to be tomorrow

her smile mistaken in the dark
cheekbone

full of old sex
and what not to rely on.

Cilantro Saddlebags

The horses
having run off with his tacos

were marked for death
sea foam

blackened and burning
a bikini-clad girl

rose into the sky like a beach towel
owl and crab

and starfish told
a Mexican

can always be recognized
by his exterior

which grates and leaves rust behind
expels a lone river

and unwanted children
like a wasted breath in a corral.

M. O.

Abuela's modus operandi
was simple and complex

her ancestors
had dropped virgins into wells

had cut out
the still beating heart

their stone temples
honored serpents and the like

abuela's rules
were simply and complex

and those very ideals
struggle to surface

and to sink
inside of me today.

The Crush

Crazy teenage love
at my age

said the old man
to himself

worse yet
maybe it was just a lifelong crush

but he pined for her
wondering if the word "pine"

was inappropriate
at his age

at her age
his heart pounding

as he put his hand
politely on her lap.

Campesina

The crop-duster swore by her
as she cowered in the fields

waiting for the poison dust
to settle

in her lungs
in her brain

worried for the child
in her loins

she kept on laboring
in the darkening fields

United Farmworker flags
waving on a nearby road

she bent back down
to the crops

the dirt so close
she had to be careful

not to
breathe it in.