When I Look At You Without Speaking, I'm Drawing A Map

I’M DRAWING A MAP WHEN I LOOK AT YOU WITHOUT SPEAKING
………………………………………………….–for Javier

Love not as origin
………………………………………………but as exodus. A parting and then
………………………another. Dust of your country
………………………………………rolling off like sweat or my name from your tongue
………in the time you loved me. That autumn
………………mosquitos ripened in the walls of your apartment
and made a border fence on my skin.

I became the robber whom you fed windows
………………………………fed me frame after frame: your silhouette
………………………………………sleeping, silhouette cutting mangoes
………………………silhouette with other ghosts—

………………Twice you were deported
………………………………before you made it to Nogales, alone and only nine
………………………years old, saguaro shadows
………pantomime. The owls flex against the sky
………………………tiger sifts its stripes of sun and absence
making it day then night. I erase

………………and picture you as I always do,
………………………………………more windfall than friend, more brother to me than fig.

Home como ancla, no como cadenas,      rather you as a worm, hooked
………………………in a little fishing village by the sea
………away from the desert calling
………………………the iguanas Mother, though they could give you no suck.
I imagine you back in El Salvador,

………gambling at a funeral, dice stirring up dirt.
The legs on a pair of ghost roses clipped and joined to your lapel.
………………You won’t die now but you’ll be disappointed you didn’t
………on a mushroom trip in a car of friends,
………………………one Muskogean morning, wheels and wheels
………………and not a scream will break
………………………………through your lobster grin. Don’t lie and say

………………………………………you’ve been here and loved this soil.
………I am unfamiliar with any other images: you on a hill
………………………………in an ocean of tall grasses. You inside Alaska
………………………………………………with ice like chocolate around your mouth.
………………………You in Montana under paperweight sky, land
………………………………………………flat as a pulse.

………………You plant kisses here
………………………………………………but don’t weed them.

………Your bear-mouth
………………………leaves raspberries in my broken skin.
………………………………………………………You’re playing
………………………hard to get, Friend, and it’s getting hard on me
………not to vacate my skirt and lift my thighs in this dry bed
of burned-up rivers. My neck is breathless unfurling
………………lungs into a map of where you’ve been.

………………………So if immigrating is loving two women,
………………………………which one of us do you dream in?
………What’s another woman to the other woman
………………………………except an extra pair of hands to bring in the harvest

………………but I can’t take you home.
………………………………………………………………………………I’m not a coyote

that way. I’m the girl you guided through the reeds
………………………………………………down to the loading docks. We lie on our backs
………………………watch October get cut to pieces by helicopter.

………………………………………………I say, look out over the vastness and forgive it all.

………………In sleep last night, I pulled three boats ashore into your port. See the
………………………………rope burns, the labor
………………………of trying to bring what you love close enough
to tie down and then ride out
………………again onto the waves
assuring the land animal that appears in all your poems,
………………………………………………this time the mule doesn’t drown.

………………………………………………This time I don’t keep a vigil until you return.
………………………This time you go and make it back to everyone.
And when we dream there aren’t oil drums.

https://youtu.be/jyZuIP5x-tQ