Lisbet

Her dress flowed red, lips rouged with a

wiggling golden fish around her neck. A traditional dance,

led simply by a child and her untouched partner.

After, she begged for a photograph, to show how

big her dress could spread; she held a serious face,

perhaps knowing she would never leave this place.

She eagerly took my hand and led me around the yard,

saying the names of fruits and giggling as I tried to repeat.

For a moment I thought of staying, of making

Quebrada Honda my home.

Secluded in the mountains, making unbleached sugar with

a horse-powered wheel, her family took me as a friend

for the afternoon. With a broken understanding, I learned to

pound the hulls of dried coffee, using a giant mortal and pestle

I beat down to the bean. It was refreshing to see

the kindness of neighbors.

Antigua, Guatemala

The cobblestone streets jar my mind

in the retired American school bus, a Guadalupe-

encrusted boat with orange flecks peeking through.

With a hope to shake this day-old fever,

and a vision of a quaint, bustling center,

I drop my pack at El Viajero and move.

Sloughing my shivering limbs the three blocks in a

new direction,  I glimpse the elderly man on the corner,

always pawning his wares, the women in front of the yellow

and white church in distinct indigenous dress,

serving up plates of tacos and fresh fruit.

The faint sound of music stirs the park as service ends,

families pour out to enjoy the sunshine;

a peaceful Sunday in Antigua.

Midnight

I often sleep through your midnight hour,
falling in love again with each dream.
In passing seasons you become more present,
or less, rarely staying for the monotony of my days.
I have not given you the clippings of wings,
or boxes full of memories.
I have given you hours and days, tangles of
emotions and desires, a handful of what
I once was.

Skin

I eat the fruit of my father's tree
and prosper without purpose.

I may name her struggles,
yet never know her pain. 

Division

Each night she dreams of leading
the resistance.
She sleeps in fields of daisies;
they come and go
with fresh growth, later withered brown
and broken.

A single bullet strikes,
the onset of new seasons.
Blood blots in outward patterns,
seeping to stain
fresh linens and virginal skin.
She succumbs each time to
the great machine, marching
on without a beat.

Must we labor for our existence
and accept a punishment
not our own?

Habit

I have always collected friends
like old habits, kept close and cured
with kindness.
Like most ailments in the world.

You hold on to tattered novels, lines
read and reread in hopes of finding new mornings,
a sunrise in which to bask, in body or imagination.
How many were the same I took breath from,
held close, made a part of me.

There is a yet bridled adventure in your eyes, a wild
to be unleashed, perhaps in the Appalachia.
Conquer the hills, and taste
what it is, to be you.

Definitions of Home

We have evolved as time
will naturally have us do;
new paths, yet the same feet and
hearts passing through.
That poignant memory we didn't realize
would ebb on us, persistently
demanding we heed its calls.
You remind me of what I once was, and where
we once thought we would go.

How we have passed through frames
and fumbled with the seams of our lives,
forgetting and remembering - siblings, lovers, friends
as emotions suspended in time.
Remove your hat and lean upon the mantle,
kick your feet up and rest a moment upon the
ever-evolving soul. A package carried
through each circumstance -
at times half unwrapped, or tied tightly with string.

We mostly come undone when we are
at home with our surroundings. We take a
breath and extend our stories for laughing,
evoking, sharing in a gesture and embrace.
I breath in new nostalgia,
a definition of home.