in the fifth season
the one called harvest
when the trees hung heavy
with every promise ever whispered
mouth ear mouth
i you forever, yes!
in the fifth season
i washed my hands of shapes
horse house dog love
and lined them on the mantel
and turning too quickly fell from an upstairs window
i fell through time and in and out of every story i have ever made
i fell through every net i’d made in case of this and
after that i fell in earnest
wild inconsolable glorious
starfish bitch
i fell through black
past stars
into
You

black sheep
green field
cow parsley already blown
i’m standing there saying
i choose the fucking moksha
the trees are like and ?
they talk amongst themselves
sap rises
they sing their song of summer
and I’m like
you. listen.
do I need to break my face ?
everything’s like yeah yeah and
next it will be autumn

i belong to myself
in that belonging i soar
eagle – sky – nothing
if you put your ear to stone
this stone
you will hear me laughing
i belong to you

i love you and i don’t
i love you and i don’t
i love you and i don’t
any longer have the space for it
which is why it keeps spilling out like this
all over the place

in the south where the days hang back to back and come at a person too many and too thick
and the women slump dead at their station
down there between Colón and Rayón
where the flies hold dominion
the witch goes after her business
her fat dog strung into silence by the neck
patient as bones
she smells of the sea and the fish she peddles
but the cat won’t go near her as singing
she takes a needle to my ribs
she’s making a sutra to the new
singing of a day when the world spun the other way
and she worked the capital
black hair swinging blue past her arse
i was good at it she says and snaps the thread
(there won’t be a going back)
and if you want you can look to where she looks over her shoulder
and into the past and the face of a trick
he bucks and squeals like a stuck pig
wild for her boyish ass
wild for her boyish dick
wild for oh oh oh Perlita
oh she cackles and her teeth spark gold
i was good at it
the faces of her grandmother and her great grandmother and something other not human nor even animal flit across her like shades on a mountain
she might be ten thousand as well as fifty
and her hands move strong as thought
do you have a friend who died ?
i look into my past and see no one
you will she says and laughs
a thing we can be sure of
and if you look up in the night when every fan screams maximum
you will see her high across the face of an egg yolk moon
moving along the invisible line the spider makes
spilling from her tattered baskets the pearls of turtle eggs
the tumbling shard a shark’s fin
the illegal she takes door to door
buying passage for the ones who’ve dropped the thread
who’ve lost the place
who’ve found themselves on their knees holding nothing but the sickness of their need to leave all this behind
to take in both trembling hands the thing she offers
and what I say when her back is turned and i’m holding out the red pouch – bones and hay and skin – she’s dropped inside my palm
what do i do with this ?
but she’s already gone singing about a mountain she’s known since she was a girl
the one which walks from place to place looking always sideways for a home
and the sea goes with her
and the song goes with her
and the gate clangs shut as
outside the women are coming to
shaking sensible slumbering children
brushing flies from sticky mouths
crying out their wares again: tamales tamales
comes the rumble as time re-starts
and in my hand the lightest gleam of gossamer
i pull
it pulls back faint and frightening
i don’t know where i am going or at what cost
she alone has both sides of the bargain
but i am going

it’s Lola with her hoop
she’s dancing on the edge of time
twirling on a straw
wearing that same old dirty bikini
the one she’s worn all week
she’s whirling in her stratosphere fast enough
to bring her heart in pieces back together
you know what she says (her laughter’s in a bubble)
reaches up takes the hoop from the sky
it’s turning on the crescent of her hand and higher
(she can make the stars stop)
her anklets gone ecstatic
do you know my biggest fear ?
it’s spinning on her neck now
her leg held high like an indian god
Lola with her eyes on fire
she’s dancing on the rings of Saturn
eh ? she says it fiercer
do-you-know-my-biggest-fear ?
one two catches it behind her head
claps and laughs outloud
being alone she says and blinks as if to say :
and there’s the gift
her hips keep the world’s spin
her eyes tell the truth
what Lola doesn’t know but will find out
is it’s the only thing she’s ever known.
the only thing she’ll ever know
alone is when she absolutely burns with life