pansies, pensées, senses. thoughts— a bouquet of violets,
a violence of violets. voile, voice, voices on my radio. radio waves, waves on the beach head, brain head. my bullying brain carried off by the tidal bore.
how many times will you accept my ungenerous impulse to control your voice. my unvoiced vowels.
after frustration, incoherence. incandescent syntax of fury.
wrath: such a pretty word for the explosive, punching, punishing result of thwarted desire.
athwart: to lie crosswise. as my anger lies at right angles to this keel.
this ocean isn’t big enough, the far shore isn’t far enough to keep you safe. from my punching fist the slap of my open hand.
open hand: that should caress that should make an offering, make a confession.
but the eddy will pull me down again and we will drown in salt and longing.
there is a Siamese cat crossing the alley. he used to be my cat but he lives with some other woman now.
the moon is also a cat— round-faced, old-fashioned, talkative.
this moon-cat follows me from room to room as I wander in the mid-night. heat soaks into my body; curls under my diaphragm; tries to suffocate me.
she finds me in my chair nestles in, will not leave. as I read, I listen to the moon-cat’s chatter, and pray for relief in this brutal, new-world August.
At the Palacio Municipal, you can pay outstanding parking tickets with counterfeit 20 dollar bills and frayed-edged loteria cards.
I keep La Sirena for myself and go out into the rain with only a paper umbrella to keep the ghosts out of my ears. They get in anyway.
In the square the Independence Youth Orchestra plays waltzes for your wristwatch that keeps time backwards and Ginger Rogers dances the lead for a change.
Epitome of everything you mistake for female, she is actually an avatar of Venus whose sea foam birth was foreseen by the side-street organ grinder.
Born Virginia Katherine McMath, this fecund goddess is the queen of a girl-crazy, blue-eyed god, who creates and destroys the matter of the universe.
As I walk toward the cathedral, your watch, the waltzes, and my paper umbrella turn to pink pulp and shower around my shoulders like the bougainvillea dropping petals. I look longingly at a little girl's roller skates, as Ginger Rogers drives by, a blue dress flapping from the bumper of her Lincoln.
