Poetry

for Jessica Alba & Danny Trejo

There has been so much death. So much killing. 
From space, the wall along the Rio Grande 
isn’t even a shadow of a shadow.

The wings deceive. They do not spread
and thinly slice the air. They rest limp,
almost useless. Dragonfly shape without its dignity.

Digging in dregs of trash
to find the bird my father needed
to get well, I tore a vanishing 
line across the length of my palm.

Three nudes crudely drawn. One crouching, 

back turned, right hand feeding the turtle 

of the painting’s title; another sitting, as if in a chair,

head bowed, eyes downcast; and a central 

Koreatown, Los Angeles

Gwendolyn Brooks stood stark naked.
I stared into her bespectacled eyes.

Ms. Brooks showed me how 
to tend to myself by scrubbing dead skin

after Romare Bearden’s Patchwork Quilt (1969)

My back is turned from him again, 
but this time I’m not hunched 
over the quilt—his rough thumbs 
gripping my waist—I’m standing 

a woman who doesn’t read                 many poems asks                            is poetry meant to be 

Sometimes I enter the small chambers of the God of Forgetting 
and take my place at his feet 
and kneel 
and bow my head.

From here I can see the children
running across the long field 

for no other reason
than
they are fast.