to a halt. And the dream derails, a halo of rusted shears
circling above those febrile scalps oblivious to diesel
exhaust lifting dawn’s gilded skirt, my throat still raw

from new love’s ashy taste where I smoked a Macanudo
down littered streets—beer pints sleeved in grocery wrap
chugged late last night to the stench of overpass piss—

buzz of Maker’s Mark mapping out some dance in the mote-
thick air of a corner bar. Try to forget her slow demise—
years of neuro-chemical shock pardoned by a cancer’s

darting eye that zeroed-in on some infinitesimal speck
scaling up her uterine wall, a soundtrack full of muffled
sobs backed up by a fleet of steel-drum bottoms hammered

over an open flame, then burnished to a noon-day shine.
To be orphaned thus in a sun-drenched room, two kisses
wrapped in foil pinning down a death certificate. A body

gnawed full of holes—those zones of black left floating
on an x-ray box, her pelvis all ghostly cradle rocking
downstream, almost free of skull and excruciating sleep.

Mother of my bones, nothing more than a dream apparition
ever walking four steps behind on that marble promenade,
pennants the color of expired coals flapping where there is

no breeze. And for once, I slow my steps till shoulders
touch—the scent of lilac sparking all around as words
arising from some fresh gash (y no quiero seguir hablando)

trumpet me awake. And what I thought was a god-like hand
hesitates at the door—a long line of clenched fists
sprinkling down mere crumbs on a mattress made of stone.