Mother kept chickens once, in coops beyond the yard. Penned like hedges to one another, she made us Steal their juevos in the morning dawn. Fresh laid, they sold well in markets. And you were just young, nothing more to do, nowhere to go. Now, tanks full of city fish sound like rain on the tin roof of mothers house in Guatemala;-- sneaking into abuelita’s bed. Listening to the world breath before she died, in the cardamom fields, remember.
II.
When the sun turned the streets to dust fields, faraway friends laughing: wild and ferociously, you bring the match from mother’s stove and light the tail from the captured cat on fire. Watch it burn. Sneakers scuff gravel kicking stones away like so many tolls collected, on the way North there’s barely room to piss in the truck; remember. Smelling skin in the noon dust, hair and dirt. You cough, but laugh hard, so they see you are smiling.
III.
Tropical nights roll like tides, spraying gentle rains and soft, tender breezes from the mountains to Chicamán chattering chortles of parroting sprees, tiny monarchs of the canopy singing semiotic chains, rhizomatic rhythms of a nomadic systems, buried deep without time. Water falls thick, wetting air inside smells of mother’s layered fruit cake, pieces of white breads sapotes y zapotes all the juices running together into the sweet sweet night.
IV.
Desert cold floods criminals in morning as the wrong bus honks; passes by. Wide faced windows two glaring headlight eyes in the dark dawn, police probing through murky sewers and city streets Looking for you: Above ground rats race into the phallic chutes and sit, dogs waiting a command. Immigrant; flick open a silver flame, light a dirtied dollar. Identified by no place at all smoking squalor Arizona’s Borders burn-- raging.
Dave Tracey with Sciatica and Vietnam
Death between a Buick and Ford Shittiest way to die i mean a Buick, and a Ford?
Who wouldn't love the army i got kicked out of school for drinking 150% proof booze In a soda can When the Dean told me not to
So i left, And got drafted, not 4 weeks later i'm in Georgia, Japan, Korea. There's no way out But in.
2 dollar hookers 15 cent cigarette packs 1 dollar beer Life will never be this good again.
Back when Washington, D.C. was a town not a city Shiny shoes and purses with matching dresses were the norm but i wore sneakers.
Life is simpler now If i miss the wastebasket i pick it up cross the street, and pick it up
Untitled, (classroom)
The students needed me. The Guinny Gang Plank Connecting Aging Poets to Commercial Institutions Lana Del Ray manning the secretarial desk Brooklyn, baby connecting graduate students To Staten Island standards
Barbara guest: She’s the only woman And she died a few years ago To swing beats and bouts of fresca
Dropped her dead thru a camera lens A woman’s fear killed her And radio killed the video silence Spring has sprung: the bell has rung Can you believe it’s decided? Trump won NY and the summer’s hotter than Jet engines in the sky
Trump won nyc and celebrated by cumming over the trump tower Poor central park, they had no choice but to be subjected to that…
Sheparded jeeps wrangled down 5th like slaves “Chai latte” she says Soporific, she falls asleep on the sugar (honestly, what the fuck is Miller talking about?!)
Boricua
What do you like to do, Set off bombs? Twenty or twenty-five years ago A woman asked me as much When I told her goodbye.
All the days before that Were good ones According to my memory--
But she walked off, Looking for America And we never talked again.
What good is closure A loaded word I wonder.
Mea culpa
Do you want this freedom-- From civilization and Voting and industrialism and Tap water and cooked meat handed to you Inside a running car for less than the cost Of a train pass?
I wouldn't be able to survive.
Frito Lays and Citgo pumping stations Nike branded everything While I breathe deep the diesel fumes and kick Condom wrappers and discarded Employment Guides
Left by the hopeless, sweaty, sand covered subway pissers whittling away minutes at a time Through cracks in their minds Feign sane in the face of the street peddler, Or claim Water is a right.
I Like You Shallow
Four in the morning don’t you ever sleep, first encounters fingers deep deep deep in the love chords damn power ballads blasting stereo exploding longing
For front stores shot to smithereens by lead feathers, whistling through driveway byways barrelguns for the better. Pout precious in your lipsmack stick red deadening
Blood ribbons like highway horizons, leading the marchers marching to the drumming hum of that loving buzz that barroom kissers bumble for against and up until; wasted
Waiters dropping tills called bills for kissers kneeling shrill vociferously frighteningly ripping out their lungs, with screams of curdling myrrh bleeding like weeping willow
Trees wounded of sap waxy and coagulating according to coordinates of astrology those crystal chakras burning within ancient memories of twinning whining vines
Wine of Sappho’s valley erupting, lapping foaming waves, like tongues swallowing the sky, purpled from spilling amethyste lattice twist and lifts upon creeking rotting oaken
Barstools. Don’t kiss in bars this encounter soft is not the deep deep rolling spill but just a brush back of that knot to your sound ear hear love that nothing, peel back parts
Perdition for the christlike fornicators purgatory for the lovers of wisdom viking ships of skeletal spectres (blood eagle caniballing) for eternity for ever for strip straight bone
Rarity whiteness that is, the thing that is the makeup the essence the ultimate undone sailing low in the deep deep low in the rivers striking fear in the pirates eye to kill the
Albatross. Unwaking skin shed human snake follicles fall in hairs collecting casements of past memors petrichor moments dried deathly breath rattling cores of bronchiale
Beings to pound the caged veins traversing them. Pumping blue bars; bar breathe from escaping the deep deep darkness inside. Deep is not where it finds itself so come here
Baby and keep it close to the surface with me, freedom from the deep from bars keep it shallow keep to the surface stay the way to escape: kiss me deep, kiss away my bar.
Sara is a born and raised Virginian with the travel bug. Her work has appeared in several publications both print and online such as Digital Papercut, Dark Matter, Chagrin River Review, and Sequoya. She currently lives and writes in New York City.
