The Rhinoceros Calf
that failed to make a strong bond with its mother
& was shipped from a Florida zoo to New Mexico’s
(they’d struck a deal with the dairy farm for that baby
would drink thousands of gallons of cow’s milk)
that calf in the corner who doesn’t know I’m watching her
or thinking anything at all & will remember her for years
will think of her often with her sugared substitute her dry
high desert air & wonder why on the coast
in humidity & hurricane weather in an enclosure
like ours
& my children sitting beside
me on the bench where I watch tears down my face my
children asking why are you crying mama & the truth
is I don’t know did that mother with her body
say nothing say no did that mother really just let go
The Girl (Whose Mother Filled Her Belly with Meth & Let Terrible People Mutilate Her Body Before Killing Her) Runs Away
for Victoria
1
She does not immediately want you to read her story on the front page of the newspaper at the Walgreens on Universe & Paradise where you’re refilling your living girl’s prescription & buying your girl safe a bottle of crystal blue electrolytes She wants you to keep your eyes on your girl playing hopscotch across the automatic doors opening & closing & opening She wants you to pick up a yellow umbrella to notice the inky splotches of sky forming behind the hills in the distance She wants you to remember those hills are volcanoes that they are sleeping & sleeping things wake up
2
When you step into the shower that night you admit you did look down at the counter & saw two women with their arms upraised You thought it harmless to keep reading You’ll never know who those women are who needed comforting Because the caption said what it said about the mother & what she let her boyfriend do Because you’re hyperventilating against the tile the girl shampoos your hair & sings Her song sounds like the one you taught her for gathering yourself from the drain like hairs like colorful strips of paper for the collage you’ve never stopped working on She tells you her plan It is so smart she is so smart You smile as she dips your head back into the warm water and rinses the soap from your eyes It doesn’t even sting the way she does it She promises she will check on you while you sleep & shows you the light She promises she will run toward it past the ditches rusting in the empty desert stretch behind your house & because you didn’t write the story & because she didn’t want you to—
3
you believe her
Quinceañera
1
My body he burned g;lue-gunning
the papier-mâché of my breasts
to the smell of arts & crafts in the recreation room
(every room after the recovery room)
like the cumbias of my girlhood dancefloors
flailing like Pentecostal Sunday Nothing tasted so good
as the mango con chile from the fruit stand
at the razor-edge of town not even the lime-
squeezed beer its smell of night-
oak shimmering in the yard I’d climb
out my window & Danny with his brother’s truck
wasn’t the one I loved wasn’t the one
who squashed the June bugs spiraling
from my navel my collarbones the peach-
fuzzed skin of my newly-shaped breasts
(girls in alleyways if you survived dumpster-
diving you survived anything)
2
A mother lost her children
to her ex-husband her children with bruises
on their thighs in the apricot-soft
within their elbows photographs the judge ruled
circumstantial or unprovable the wife could not prove
I’m wrecked for a system failing to protect what we love
When I say wrecked I mean the razorblade
I stole when I was fifteen from the hardware store
pressed to my wrists like cat claws
I told my mom were the neighbor’s cat’s
Mom she’s wild she’s untamable that fat tabby
(I don’t mean wrecked for the women but
unmothered things)
3
My ex’s nana had a stroke
& my ex-nuera Sally told me she asks for me time to time
my ex-railyard familia barbacoa & soaking beans
like I’m never drunk in the grass anymore wailing
like that alley tabby I’ve never stopped
needing—she lies in bed
between my husband & me stomach pressed
to sheets & waiting hollowed calavera
en día de los muertos marigolds
laid on the altar of her belly button
though now she could be my ex’s daughter
at her Quinceañera in white like a mother in the news
who measured her daughter’s growth through
years pressed in a wedding dress from the time
she was a baby God she was too young
4
& fifteen was a good year for me—
In the desert time of Valley ache in that wide bowl
of my hips bone dry asparagus fields crackling
heatwave where I’m still burying placenta fat as hearts
& beating back border roots with my fists
(I told the girl who said this poem is her one
chance the doors will shut love in your face love—
knock them down climb the fucking fire
escape) year I first learned to light myself
on fire call the firetruck of my own
body that holiest of waters
