When My Brother Was an Aztec Read Free Page A

tinfoil from the trunk of an old brown Buick
    with a cracked windshield and a pair of baby Jordan shoes hanging
    from the rearview mirror—her sleeping brown baby tied tightly
    into a cradleboard in the backseat.

    Just the other day, at a party on first beach, someone asked
    if she still had that 3-point touch, if she wished she still played ball,
    and she answered that she wished a lot of things,
    but what she wished for most at that minute was that she could turn
    the entire Colorado River into E & J Ripple—
    she went on a beer run instead,
    and as she made her way over the bumpy back roads along the river,
    that smooth-faced baby in the backseat cried out for something.

Cloud Watching

    Betsy Ross needled hot stars to Mr. Washington’s bedspread—
    they weren’t hers to give. So, when the cavalry came,
    we ate their horses. Then, unfortunately, our bellies were filled
    with bullet holes.

    Pack the suitcases with white cans of corned beef—
    when we leave, our hunger will go with us,
    following behind, a dog with ribs like a harp.

    Blue gourds glow and rattle like a two-man band:
    Hotchkiss on backup vocals and Gatling on drums.
    The rhythm is set by our boys dancing the warpath—
    the meth 3-step. Grandmothers dance their legs off—
    who now will teach us to stand?

    We carry dimming lamps like god cages—
    they help us to see that it is dark. In the dark our hands
    pretend to pray but really make love.
    Soon we’ll give birth to fists—they’ll open up
    black eyes and split grins—we’ll all cry out.

    History has chapped lips, unkissable lips—
    he gave me a coral necklace that shines bright as a chokehold.
    He gives and gives—census names given to Mojaves:
    George and Martha Washington, Abraham Lincoln,
    Robin Hood, Rip Van Winkle.

    Loot bag ghosts float fatly in dark museum corners—
    I see my grandfather’s flutes and rabbit sticks in their guts.
    About the beautiful dresses emptied of breasts…
    they were nothing compared to the emptied bodies.

    Splintering cradleboards sing bone lullabies—
    they hush the mention of half-breed babies buried or left on riverbanks.
    When you ask about officers who chased our screaming women
    into the arrowweeds, they only hum.

    A tongue will wrestle its mouth to death and lose—
    language is a cemetery.
    Tribal dentists light lab-coat pyres in memoriam of lost molars—
    our cavities are larger than HUD houses.
    Some Indians’ wisdom teeth never stop growing back in—
    we were made to bite back—
    until we learn to bite first.

Mercy Songs to Melancholy

    It’s the things I might have said that fester.
    Clemence Dane

    I found your blue suitcases
    in my little sister’s closet,
    navy socks with holes in the heels, packets of black
    poplar seeds, damp underwear.
    Please hang your charcoal three-piece suit somewhere
    else. Please stop
    dragging wire hangers across her arms and stomach.

    ~

    Who mines her throat?
    The picks spark, sparklers from a Fourth of July
    when stars weren’t bits of glass.
    The clanking is too many
    pennies in each pocket
    on a riverbank, telephones and wrong numbers.
    Why won’t you put her on the phone? Why
    did you cover the bedroom windows with yesterday’s
    newspaper? The pages are yellow,
    the stories are old.

    ~

    There’s no such thing as gentle weeping.
    Your gray guitar
    is my sister—the hole in the chest
    gives you both away.

    ~

    I’ve seen you before
    in the Picasso museum—all corners,
    a plaza of bulls,
banderillas.
The grandstand full.
    Old women, sisters begging for ears and tails, shaking
    handkerchiefs—in the sky, glittering magpies,
    razorblade ballads, and Ma Rainey records. These blues are
    not so sweet as jelly beans. They are not small.
    ~

    She is my sister, goddammit.
    She is too young to sit at your table,
    to eat from your dark pie.

If Eve Side-Stealer
& Mary Busted-Chest
Ruled the