ROSA ALCALÁ
TRACE OF LOVERS
1.
Boys in basketball jerseys
turn
from the sneaker sale
and elbow
each other.
They walk away
& come back.
The breast drawn into
public view
by a good
latch.
All those hormones
dizzying
the horde
pull them
closer
to find a tiny mouth
wedded
to their desire
and
my belly
whose ancient scrolls
unfurl.
Is this not
what they
bargained for?
2.
What other animals
are awake
with us?
The cats hide beneath
their paws. The neighbor’s
five dogs peaceful
at this opaque
and formless
hour.
A lizard’s white underbelly
strobes across
the bathroom window.
Our bed
wild kingdom
our burrow.
You suckle me
into the dream of the tiger
running after the baby
antelope.
My brothers yell, GO! GO!
and I turn from the TV set
as wobbly-legged
he collapses into brush.
3.
The breast pump buzzes
& beeps at intervals
through my office door.
Their professor
perverse
madonna & machine
if suddenly they entered
with camera.
My body is penmanship
marginal
to their poems.
Why alarm them?
My rushed sign reads:
Do Not
Distu^b
R
4.
The cacophony of mating season
on NPR.
Could a male penguin thaw
this bag of breast milk
between fat and fur?
I cannot imagine sex in Antarctica.
(I’m not to imagine sex
at all)
5.
Halo of milk inside the bra cup.
The afterimage, the olfactoid.
A shroud
for the faithful. Who
is just one.
O, ye
of little faith.
6.
In the playground no one smells
on me the cumulative trace
of lovers. My milk, my ilk
as alibi.
But I want to confess
to fantasies filthier
than the baby pool.
Then a phobia,
a strange moral
tic.
The bra flap clicks
back into place.
7.
At the baby shower
she unwraps
and holds in the air
a Hooter Hider.
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*** ** ***
THIS IS NOT THE END OF MY FILM CAREER
Look, I may be no Meryl Streep, but unlike that Daughter of the Revolution, I do my own stunts. Wig or no wig, I’m gonna play the hell out this part. For example, in the first scene, they wanted grandma to break a hip, so I gave them a broken hip: I careened from kitchen counter, over stools, and fell precisely on my mark. People know when they are fooled, they want the real thing. Do you know what I told the director when the “firemen” chopped down the door to save poor old granny? I cannot work like this. They are too pretty to put out fires. I’ll just lie here until you find the right type to carry me off screen. The child actors—like my very own children!—grew tired of the delays and shoved the food stylist’s props into their mouths. It’s the same thing for this extended nursing home scene. I told the director, look the lighting in here is terrible, and there are so many characters at different hours, I’m not sure we even know what the story is anymore. I’ll have to review my contract when my son comes in for his cameo. Did I mention my daughter-in-law wrote the script? She keeps revising it, but the ending’s the same. Sure, I’ve heard the gossip that I’m being replaced by someone younger. One day, I’ll just walk out the door and into a location with better exposure.
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ROSA ALCALÁ
Rosa Alcalá is the author of three books of poetry, Undocumentaries and The Lust of Unsentimental Waters, both from Shearsman Books (2010 & 2011), and M(y)Other Tongue (forthcoming 2017, Futurepoem Books). Her poetry has also appeared in a number of anthologies, including Stephen Burt’s The Poem is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them (Harvard UP, 2016) and Angels of the Americlypse: An Anthology of New Latin@ Writing (Counterpath, 2014). The recipient of an NEA Translation Fellowship, she has translated poetry by Lila Zemborain, Lourdes Vázquez, and others, and her translations appear in The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry. Spit Temple: The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), which she edited, was runner-up for a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Born and raised in Paterson, NJ, she now lives in El Paso, TX, where she teaches in the Department of Creative Writing and Bilingual MFA Program at the University of Texas-El Paso.
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Note: The Photo “Girl with Shark Girl,” by Jeff Sirkin, depicts a girl interacting with the installation Come Follow Me, entrance by Casey Riordan Millard. Come Follow Me, entrance is a mixed media installation created for the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center’s UnMuseum, 2012.
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A Dozen Nothing 