Una Carta de Amor
de la Llorona with special
thanks to Danny Solis
open a jar for the dead, the
winds of an openmouthed
river like a fishy kiss, oily,
will ride up your neck
it has been minutes, decades
only a day since
the departure of my cherub
stones, my children
made of pitfalls and marble, two
pairs
of trusting eyes
the moon a witness to their
slipping away
beneath a blackness like the
spit of a serpent,
the river who froths at her
lipless mouth
I am a wandering offrenda, a
burning white flame, a woman
without footprints
Ay, diablo! pull my fantastic
hair of colorless ribbon,
shred me with your long talons
like papel picado
like eyelets of a delicate dirty
lace
you are my inverted love, my
mariachi monstrosity
pull me into the dirt with you,
I will rub this sand between my
legs, haunches ragged
with the smell of your open palm
you are the closest thing to a
man
let your onion eyes linger
over my crow eaten bones
you are the living thing inside
of my dead moon,
the noose of my womb,
the worm-rotten entrails
pine away, you silver-footed
devil, tongue of a bastard,
I have seen a meandering love
like yours before,
now my lidless eyes are peeled
back over my skull as I watch
you with all of the blood and
wrath I have ever known
I spit on your pile of ash, your
pious truth, your pitiful love
I have no use for the stone
hearts of men
or the monsters who used to be
men
What shame my husband brought to
us,
you should have seen his
lackluster eyes,
his ghostly slit that spoke to
the back of my head
his pockets empty with gold,
head full of stale air
his arrogant thighs
his high-cropped riding pants
his slick stallion
like bitter potatoes he cast us
back to the earth
When he paraded that woman,
made of silk and parasol,
hot coals scorched my eyes
my peasant knuckles yearned for
something to smash against
I am a love-shorn bride,
a barefoot gaggle of ball and
socket
take this piece of hip-bone
carve it into an obsidian blade
and
cut this womb from me. Ay,
Cucui torture me soft with your
light-footed rooster, madman
dance
acid rain letters of the dead
we will fashion a house of
sticks and burnt stone,
cobbled brick of blackened bread
the windows shades made of our
eyelids
sightless so that I might not
remember
the spectacle of the river
you will let me forget I ever
gave birth
and instead I will forge you
from the jelly of my gut
Ay, El Muerto, you knock-kneed
skeleton
you are the husband I am meant
to have
our beloved bridal bed wilts
like
white magnolia and softens like
curdled milk
Tell me, dark lord, in whose
child shall I find reprieve?
What thin-ankled dark-haired
beauty will become my savior,
my temporary resurrection?
I am no Medusa ?
I will ink out these stars,
stick a dagger in every last one
of them.
I will blind the night.
I am all that whispers, the
knotted hair of Hemlock,
a banshee, misfit cry,
a bag full of misbegotten keys,
the sour breath of grief
I tend my garden of stewed
tomato
and maggoty meat, a bushel of
eyelashes
and childrenfs smiles
my gardens are overgrown
with thickets, with the laces of
tiny shoes, bits of colored
foil,
pin-wheels and yarn,
the tattered love of a mother
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