ANDREA BLANCAS BELTRAN

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Photo by Jeff Sirkin

UNINVITED GUEST

If memory is related to mourning then what does this morning glory recall once the large spider retreats to another bloom? The memory of its sprawled legs like mosquito bites on the perimeter of white petals. A mourning constellation. Scratch scratch scratch like nostalgia. Oh, now I see how it goes.

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LAST WISH

To return as Russian thistle. To bloom with both flowers & spines. To be mistress of salt, soon to be mascot of wind with no map to obey. To break with her roots, once & for all—a tumbleweed now free to head out alone into Socorro, litter its streets and sidewalks with seed. To wander with barefoot kids on bikes, women hanging laundry, men picking cotton under supervision of the sun, hens roaming in search of a place to roost. To be, even in death, haunting the earth, everywhere as home.

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LITTLE GOD, OR RETROSPECTIVE ON MOTHERHOOD

before I knew / what a body could do / I submerged a roll of life / -savers into my mom’s 10-gallon / fish tank, watched it settle / into fake blue gravel, waited / for the rainbow I thought I could make / in the water, went to bed, forgot / about it all, woke up, walked about / with my dollhouse imagination & found / my mom crying against the glass. look—/ all my fish—suctioned / to the sides of the tank. I couldn’t / look at what I’d done & would never / confess to. what girl could / know that creation & neglect / could be this innocent?

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PLURALS

Typing quotations about translating tangos, I realize I want to spell tangos as tangoes, & I think about mangoes & wonder if I’ve been spelling this word all wrong for a good part of my life, but then I look up mangoes & see this is the correct spelling, but the relief is fleeting & then I’m back to worrying about tangos & that missing e—did mangoes borrow it from tangoes because it needed a letter for what the tongue does when it curls a juicy chunk of mango into the depths of its mouth & sends it descending down the throat, or did tangos abandon the e the way one does a dance partner at a certain point in one’s life—& maybe these two things occurred at the same time—aha, a twist of fate, because once one devours a slice of mango one wants to tango around the room reveling in that moment of bliss meant for only one. & one ends with an e. I see it now. & that’s why mangoes is spelled mangoes and tangos is just tangos. There is no grammar rule for this. & don’t ask me why I was typing quotations about translating tangos.

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GETTING OUT OF DODGE

I bought a dog

& named him

god just so I could

believe in something

again. These are words

you won’t see on a sign

advertising your neighborhood

church for everyone

would be out

front asking, But who

will help us

reckon with our lone

-liness? Just like the last

drive-in diner

in the city that’s been

struggling for years

vehicles line up

from miles around only when

they hear it’s closing

at the end of the month.

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BIRD-WATCHING AS A FORM OF FAITH

As soon as you think

you see some

-thing, it’s gone. I think

I hear the same bird

from yesterday, feel

for the binoculars, tell

myself I should memorize

its call, but I don’t

want even this joy to be

predictable, dependable

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I ONCE HEARD

a man talk / about true silence / being found inside / a Hawaiian volcano / where the decibels / slide into negative / loss becomes less / than nothing when / solving this equation // a friend says / he does not / believe in closure / for definitions vary / depending upon one’s / reception & perception // the man said / silence is not / absence of sound / but absence of / noise & this / is what losing / you is like / silence as sound / as in having / something that is / nothing can be / measured as if / having nothing is / at least having / something wake me / every night & / morning—this quiet / that is not / quieting—a silence / you could not / know you protect

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