I am sitting in the Embassy
waiting for my number to be called.
There’s a plastic chain that divides
where the U.S. citizens sit
from where the locals sit.
I’m on the U.S. side.
Some of the people sitting with me
have lost their passports
or have had them stolen.
I am on a simple mission –
I just need a form
to prove I am receiving
my Social Security.
It was a time when the local police
were being heavily militarized,
marching around in new uniforms
and new weapons.
Racism was endemic in the language,
and de facto segregation was everywhere,
although nobody used that term for it,
but hate crimes were clearly increasing,
although the state called them
civil forfeitures.
And the legislators keep passing
new laws
restricting where people could go,
To be born female
is to be made crazy.
You soon learn that your purpose
is to let a man inject you with seed
so that you will incubate babies.
You will be given dolls
to practice with.
You will be given rituals
to explain it all.
You will be indoctrinated.
I love women
I love everything about them
the way they smell
the way they look
the way they sound
the way they plot
the way they twist the knife in
the foolish mistakes they make
to compensate for the worse mistakes
that men make
for example,
I sat next to Sheila in the bar last night
and she was telling me that she always
asks a man on the first date if he’s open to marriage
Cuando vivía en la costa norte
por el mar
en esa pequeña cabaña
millas de nadie,
que era bastante agradable.
Nadie vino a visitar.
No hay Internet.
Sólo yo, el vino, y mi computador.
No había nada más que hacer
así que escribí todas las noches.
No pensé que yo era feliz.
Someone sent me a book.
I don’t know who.
The woman from downstairs
is in the apartment of the man next door.
I know she is in love with him
because when I had my ear pressed against the wall
I heard the way she looked at him.
I have a lava lamp
and a small book of poems.
I dream of a time where nothing matters
I dream of a space where I don’t need anyone,
odd…
finding a poem I had written late the night before
and not remembering that I wrote it
(there had been some drinking involved)
reading it
as if for the first time.
It was about this woman I had met a few nights earlier
I decided to edit it a bit
take her name out
remove some of the more adolescent lines
make it sound like I wasn’t such a fool
In the center of my city
is a plaza, a park you would say
in your country.
Large trees give shade from the late afternoon
summer sun.
Lovers lay stretched out on the grass talking.
Families spread blankets for picnics.
Groups of teenagers sit together playing guitar.
It’s quite idyllic.
I walk by and observe.
My city is a seaport
with a wooden boardwalk along the water.
It appears my wine glass is empty
and I have miles to go before I sleep
so let us go then you and I
back to the kitchen to fill the glass high
Just a second glass for the roses
Or the hoses
Or for you and I here among these noses
for it yet remains to see
If immortality will unveil a
3rd glass for me.
But if I had to perish twice
I would pick a chardonnay on ice