(ink, watercolor, and gouache, 10″x6″)
Wood-boring beetles gave the angel small eyes everywhere
that wept little mounds of dust but did not weaken its vision.
Give this bone to another dog said the artesano.
In English we say Tell it to the Marines.
When my father was seventeen, in the junior ROTC, he took apart
and reassembled an M1 rifle, blindfolded, on local TV.
My mother said she’d visit me in Canada.
The man at the airport, on oxygen, who spoke in short
bursts, was hard to understand for the gasps.
Marriage, he imagined, was a magic satchel into which everything fit.
But a mental image is always a description: siphon of smoke.
In the shade of trees no longer there, eyes folding and unfolding
like proteins, we thumb through a book of pressed flowers.
All the same, the sun burns holes in our pockets: guests
in a fragrant mirror, we can’t wait to spend the day.