She has gone into flight,
flickering about the pre-dawn half light
of the kitchen,
grinding the coffee beans,
so recently pulled from the earth,
into fine mahogany ash,
clanging about the bruised
pots and pans, a blush
burning her fingers and cheeks.
Beyond the open door, heavy rain
keeps the overripe heat
from rising off patchy grass and
broad shoulders split a sliver
of heather horizon, sheathed by
a t-shirt stained with earth and sweat.
He stamps wet clods from his boots
at the threshold. She pads over naked floors,
coffee lapping at the rim of his cup.
Their fingers graze in exchange, her eyes
taking in the crack of his smile through
brambles of black beard.
His, combing the juvenile curves
budding beneath thin white linen,
a faint eclipse tracing her nipples,
the flare of hem around the port
of her hips. He is paid to till the
ramshackle finca that swallows
la casa de mamá. To break the gaunt
stallions that shit as they graze by nesting
his brow on theirs, a soft bolero playing
on his sun-cracked lips. He does the same to her
in the stable, lifting her white linen,
the kicks and neighs of the horses dressing the thrusts and moans
as night dresses the deed, taking the whole of her body
and splitting it into the places he can fit,
the things she did not know he could do to it.
Her legs tremble on the walk back and
she wonders if the lack of equilibrium twisting
the frontier between heaven and home
is what drunk is. If her mother will smell him on her.
If she now smells of the ocean he crossed.
Of English language books and the studio apartment on 103rd street,
where the rent costs more than la casa de mamá.
If he will leave phases of black and blue moons on her arms,
like those that dot his, when he leaves back across the Atlantic.
If it will hurt less the next day
or the day after that or...
the next day she has gone into flight,
flitting about the pre-dawn half-light
of the kitchen,
grinding coffee beans,
so recently pulled from the earth
into mahogany ash,
clanging about the bruised
pots and pans, a blush
burning her fingers and cheeks.
コメント