PART III: 1995–2007
Winter Tapestry
Your Advice
Distaste
Fried Rice
Twelve Years Ago
Wedding
Listen
Ode
Poultry
Angels
El Clave
Bipolar
Prayer
Deseo #5
Respuesta
Reincarnated
Ascension
Shrink
In Your Other Life
Forgetting
Spell
Bulk
Apologia
When You Die
CODA: Last Dream
A salon, or sunlit rotunda (our old dining room?).
You come speak to me. People who knew you come too,
whispering things.
This business of biography is a sham.
Thin green brocade of words.
Knots of grief. Can grief be a gift?
I fear it will make me your enemy but you must
trust me: I offer this in peace.
That you can speak to dogs.
That they don’t listen to you.
That women are impenetrable,
except for the obvious.
That children should like you.
That it’s possible to be a hero.
That the good things in life are bad for
you: mothers, malted milk balls, cocaine.
That there is a God but He’s ignored you.
That a family awaits you.
That you suffer for cheapness.
(Are you listening, Dad?)
That one morning you’ll wake up dead.
And that will be without pain.
To recover the lost wealth
of boyhood, to bait you
with the magic of ordinary days.
Our childhood is dead.
Nothing is left but this:
your words against mine.
That Mami asked ¿Quién es?
when you were put in her arms.
That her teeth fell out.
That she got fat and depressed.
That three children in thirty-five
months was too much.
It’s not that she rejected you,
but this:
No one thought she was pretty anymore.
No one looked at her twice.
This was never you—
firstborn; daughter, time
standing still for pure awe.
Celebrations and party dresses,
professional photographs.
When you were born, the revolution
soured and the deluxe world we lived in
was crumbling. Who had time to welcome
one small boy?
You gave away everything:
your candy and rapt attention, the marbles
on your Chinese checkerboard.
I winced at your misplaced trust. Why couldn’t you
toughen up? You were a boy, weren’t you?
Where
