On The Swallow’s Tail

Wide antic eyes, Salvador, you are your brother
dead, but better. Do you rest on his grave and
tell him about 17th century moustache and
Gala, everything he misses out on.
No need, he sweeps your bones when
they need to grow.
He plants ideas and colors in Spain
where people steal your dreams.

I will give you hopeful fruit
that can be nailed to a wall,
make it my four walls please – a trapezoid leaning in
like egg yolk – protein for my absent
skill. If I had yours,
if only,
I would be she, your catastrophe theory,
feeding you death on a spoon.
I could be your nervous system, taking your wishes
from your guts.
We are not “in fact or intention”
We are surrealism
and I know this because I live inside you,
inside your brother.

They Try To Erase Me

I never had been born. It was old hands
that sketched my frame. Hands that knew how to suffer
wisely. It was a gift
to my bones, a curse that shifts
with weight and time.
Clocks wait on scales to tip time. I am rushed.
Blood cycles through my life.
Old lines outline my eyes. I am timed.

I slept with a man
and was traced. He recreated me; my child.
My simple face on a prettier canvas.
I didn’t wish for this.
I didn’t dream.
She just belongs to me.
I drag my bones along aching seas
each step pains deeper with memory,
with time.
Dark lines shade over mine.
They try to erase me

From my bones, I cry.
I cannot be
an easy sketch of a memory.