for you, since the night an
old Brown lady yelled in the storefront
church on the corner gloria a Dios change
is coming, soon. if you like, we can stop
in to see this old woman who knows how
to pull apart the gods people have carefully
made, she will listen to the stories you
care to conjure, and then she will tell you
to face the closed door her children have
pounded for years. if you walk with me
a little further, to the bodega where the old
men once soldiers sit, you will discover from
them the stains on our democracy were
made with blood and all kinds of colored
skin. you may be surprised, by the close
of this stroll beneath the fat moon, you
may end up talking with new depth
into our light and dreams.
Rising Up
quietly,
I sat in the rising
light of this day absorbed
by news of a new president
who hardly gives a thought
to a future of peace, the people
who sing their children to sleep in
Spanish, the blameless refugees who
recall with prayer the God who lives
in the Middle East, the shouting eyes
of women marching the streets, and
the Black lives rising up to chase away
darkness from every side.
quietly,
I listened to the chirping birds around me
say in their very gentle ways, the great
Maker filled the lot of us with life to rob
the moron in power a lengthy Oval Office
stay, their songs filled me with the most
peculiar joy for in the faces of all those the
bellicose leader scorns with his indecorous
rhetoric of hate the richer light of the One
crowned with thorns staggers from the dark
to make a loving case.
quietly,
I recollected while pushing hope into the
tormented day, the new White House clay
will one day also turn to dust, have to reckon
with the angry breathe of God, and wonder
on the road to Peter’s Gate past the great
hills folding above the life settled from sea
to shining sea what awaits him—I chuckled
at the thought: A Wall!
The Stripper
one night
in the middle of winter
moonlight flooded
the bedroom
to make it
feel a world
without end.
But looking
out the window
at the strained street,
I recalled
the smell of the
bar where Sonia
dissolved
dreams
dancing near
naked for greasy
men who
emptied their pockets
of change for a
peak.
my heart twisted
remembering
the day Sonia
said Johnny the
cop wanted her
to be his
perfect girl.
I cried recalling
the walk in the
little park where
Sonia stepped on a dry leaf
that crunched so loudly
beneath her foot she
whispered—that is
life for me. I looked
up at the moon with
my wet eyes stared
it in the face to say Sonia
with her choked heart
is trying to outlast
these splitting
days.
Charmed
she sits in a rocking chair going
back to the stories that charmed
her heart for hours, tales read in
the dim light of a child’s room
