EL SOL

EL SOL
             —for Jorge Luján upon the birth of his son

With his birth, Uriel divides the year in half
because he unites two continents and cultures,
his father says. Jorge writes of his new sun,
making apologies for his poor English.
His words glow with such paternal pride,
there is no mistake of grammar.
He asks if I'll write a poem for Uriel.
And to the unasked question–
No, my life didn't end when I gave back the sun.
The magician's fruit was filled with bitter seeds,
a womb of fish eyes glistened under his knife,
but the heart of the papaya was no less sweet than any other.
Once severed, we couldn't put the two halves back together.
Excuses issued from the corners of our dreary hearts
into the small casket where the moon sleeps.
Jorge, you hold the sun in your arms
while I continue to chase shadows in darkness.
And these unintended words, a labor of love.

1989

CPITS writing workshop with Jorge Lujan 4/12/88

 CPITS writing workshop with Jorge Lujan 4/12/88

I am in my mother’s arms, the long sun in my eyes. I am mesmerized by her red lips and the jungle print of her flared skirt that later became a pillow for my grandmother’s couch. My jowls quiver with baby fat, my milk eye squinting in the sun, it’s Easter, I drool on my mother’s arms in the unbearably hot sun. By the same white car with its dusty blue top, where moments earlier my grandparents stood sternly gazing at the camera, all bright colors in my mind, all this fuss, my hand clutching red and green ribbons under my chin and I’m scratching scratching. I chew down on her arm and a rocking motion jiggles all the colors into a swirl. At the age of two, gazing out of this photograph, I see a woman older than my mother in a red dress, and an embroidered tapestry with mirrors. She is writing in a book and all those controlled marks that grown-ups call writing, I sweep my arms across the paper and tables making all this writing of lessons into vortexes. This woman has no children. Her grandmother is dead. She is much sadder than I can imagine. I have no words for this kind of sorrow that slips from her eyes in all the colors of the world like a river . She is in a classroom filled with children writing, a tall man sings poems about when he was five. There is not much difference between us, we are the same under the skin. She has collected many facts in her 35 years while I am a clean slate about to begin. 

• PHOTO ALBUM

Mexico Journal, August 30, Sunday, Alberto Blanco's house, Mexico City

August 30, Sunday

We have a long cena at Alberto Blanco's house Elsa Cross, Jorge Luján, his wife, Rebbe, Gloria Givertz, etc. Such talent all in one room. I'm not sure I'll ever see them again.

Last night John did the sea-cucumber whole gut-spilling again, said he was looking forward to a two-month separation. This morning he was contrite, he says he does want to be with me.

I dreamt I was on a chair chain ladder, I was able to climb up it. But not down. John was at the top. There was no way to grasp the smooth surface without letting go of the chain. No transition to firm ground, terra firma to such lofty heights. John reached over to help me but began slipping in his rival persona, his alter ego rescued him. And he was resentful.

Always the dilemma of yes but no. There are two of him, two sides fighting, one on firm ground, the other on more treacherous ground, with me in the middle, with the most danger of falling. I stand the most to lose.

Tonight John wanted to make love. I said I didn't want to because we were separating for two months as agreed upon in Oaxaca, and it was easier this way for me. Apparently, he thought because he had redeclared his love, though amended, the arrangement was off, but he forgot to tell me that.

So I spent the day severing myself from him, I'm always hurt by his sea-cumbering, the repetition only serves to make me isolate and wall off the pain in the same manner as I do for my chronic neck and back pain. The cellular approach. How do I feel inside? I honestly don't know. The thought of separation is painful, but I'm also really tired of this routine. I'm less willing to put up with it.

He moves to the couch for the second night in a row. I don't sleep well either way. I want things more concrete. If he says separation, then let's do it, not use it as a morbid bait. I almost don't even want to commit the details to paper because it seems so counterproductive to be in this space again. Oh God, not again.

My last night in Mexico ends the same way my first night here began, in separate beds, with the threat or the idea of the impending breakup looming over our heads.

Mexico Journal: Aug 4 María Engracía & Jorge Vallejo's party

Last night's party one of those perfect events where everything is so memorable, in focus and one is aware of the specialist at the time and place, it was perfect harmony. 

Lourdes sang my poem, Horseflesh, with an effortless beautiful voice. It was very moving, the song is included in Jorge Luján's Espectaculo, mine is the only one in English. Also included were poems set to music by e.e. cummings T.S. Eliot and John Simon. What a lineup.

I gave María Engracía the Chichén Itzá book of photos of the Museum of Anthropology. I should send her some other larger prints. Alberto Blanco liked his photo, even with the lampshade halo over his head. When we return from Guatemala, I will do more for him possibly for an upcoming book photo.

John and I decided not to go to Belize after a Belize Airlines plane from Argentina crashed into Mexico City, killing 40 people on the ground, its cargo was 18 horses. Polo ponies. 14 horses were killed outright, one died later. Another was found grazing on the embankment, but he was so badly injured, he was put to sleep. I am haunted by dreams of horses falling from the sky.

Meanwhile in Mecca, nearly 700 pilgrim pilgrims were killed. The Iranian pilgrims burned an American flag, and the Saudi police fired into the crowd. Getting the news is rough these days.

I gave Monica Monsour a copy of Carolyn Forché's Gathering the Tribes, and I gave Alberto Blanco a copy of Robert Hass's Praise and I gave Jorge some new e.e. cummings books. Something of my homeland. 

The wines I bought from Sonoma County, we drank last night. Jorge Vallejo, the archaeologist, Maria Engracía's husband, was very appreciative. I love great men, we chatted about anthropology for quite some time, and he was very good at explaining Spanish idioms to me. It was a sublime Spanish lesson. 

It is much easier for me to speak Spanish when the other person has a few words of English to help me out and to correct me, it also helps if I'm a little bit drunk. The words come easier. 

August 4, 1987 

Christmas Day, hung over, with a parrot, Mexico City

Canadá 40, Coyoacán:

Burrrrro! Oh, burrrrro! Uh-oh! Aha! Anna? Anna! Yo quiero Coca-Cola.The parrot in the courtyard below keeps shouting and whistling TV slogans. He yells Burrrrro! and Lorrrrro! and repeats his entire repetoire at the top of his lungs. I wonder where the burro is hiding. Inside my head. Oh!

John has gone exploring in Coyacán for breakfast. I'm translating Spanish from a parrot. Hola he says. I'm translating messages from the parrot world. Oh, hangover!

Pan dulce, papaya, jugo, we have breakfast at Jorge's. Every place is closed today, it's Christmas. Last night the entire city partied until dawn. No one told me that Christmas Eve, or La Posada, was an all night affair. 

María Engracía's family was wild. At 3 AM I was utterly exhausted, drunk, ready to sleep under the table, but the night was still young. Her husband Jorge, I liked very much. We spent the evening discussing the Rosetta Stone. I found out later he was an archaeologist. I wish I had known, I have so many burning questions. But oh, my head. El perico dice: ¡Lor-r-r-ro!

Mexico journals

added 9/17

When I later told Jorge Luján, who was staying at his girlfriend Rebbe's flat, the story, he said: You must be imagining things. The neighbors don't have a parrot. ¡Ojala, tengo un dolor grande en mi cabeza!

Christmas en DF, Mexico City

Mexico City after the Quake

The weekend of October 10, John and I steal away from the arts meeting in Pasadena to hear Jack Grapes and Rubén Martínez read at Venice Sculpture Gardens.

Our host, Rubén is distracted, shaken by the earthquake. He withdraws his last $500 out of the bank to fly to El Salvador, the latest earthquake was M7.9. His family, his grandparents—still no word. His parents tell him it's useless to go. But tonight he will leave for Mexico City and then onto El Salvador. I tell him to record the event, to be a journalist as well as a worker and a poet.

I'm reading an article by Rubén in a Santa Cruz paper edited by poet Stephen Kessler, called The Sun. They are repairing the Hotel Monte Carlo where DH Lawrence once lived. We ascend the circular stairway and visit each room with its purity of plaster and dust and paint.

The old church, now a library, leans heavily on the Hotel Monte Carlo. The nine-story parking garage is reduced to three stories. A building across the street is being torn down. Most of the buildings are being repaired. It's harder to see the effects of the earthquake now.

There's a new Zócalo along La Avenida Reforma where a huge high-rise hotel once stood. On the way to the House of Cambio to change our dollars into pesos, we step over healed cracks in the pavement. In some places the earth rose up several several inches. Other places had lateral motion. The curb along the Reforma is displaced by several inches.

Jorge's third story flat has huge cracks running through it, the metal window frames no longer fit. So we tie them close. Life continues.

Earthquakes – Mexico City is still recovering from the September 1985 quake. One year later, it's harder to see the damage. Sometimes I look up and see the torn buildings and I begin to cry. So much gray cement. Where does it all go?

El Salvador. Rubén removes the cement. There will be bodies beneath those ruins. Impromtu tombstones. I'm afraid to leave this article about the earthquakes behind in Mexico City. As if that could remove the damage. Sympathetic magic. So I take the newspaper back to the states.

We live on the San Andreas Fault. When there are earthquakes in Mexico and in El Salvador, Americans say there was so much damage because of the way buildings were constructed there, and laugh with a superior attitude.

Magnitude 7.4 what buildings can withstand that shock? How will San Francisco do any better when the big quake comes? They have no idea how bad the damage can be. When it comes, who will dig them out? Who will bury them?

October 10, 1986
added 9/17

HORSEFLESH

 HORSEFLESH
         —for John Oliver Simon

Sometimes as you sleep in my arms,
my hand strokes your face.
I imagine it to be nude of flesh
& bleached white by weather.
Then I can explore your eyes,
slide down the sweep of jawline,
walk through dark Bavarian forests
where horsetraders from Alsace
read the Torah by candle flame.
Somewhere near the browline,
the ancestors have marked you
in the wrinkled grey folds
where the past & future sleep.

Baja 1986

1994 H.M. Judah L. Magnus Museum, 8th Annual Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Poetry on the Jewish Experience
1989 Creative Discourse
1986-88 Falling to Sea Level
1988 Poetry SF, 2nd Prize, National Poetry Association
         The Paper
1987 Marin Poetry Center