When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz

of my torso, zoo of canines and Blake’s tygers,
    this red-skinned apple, lamp illuminated by teeth, gang of grin, spitwad of scheme,
    this jawbone of an ass, smiling sliver of smite, David’s rock striking the Goliath of my body,
    this Library of Babel, homegrown Golgotha, nostalgia menagerie, melon festival,
    this language mausoleum:
chuksanych iraavtahanm, ’avi kwa’anyay, sumach nyamasav,
    this hidden glacier hungry for a taste of titanic flesh,
    this pleasure altar, French-kiss sweatshop, abacus of one-night stands, hippocampus whorehouse, oubliette of regret,
    this church of tongue, chapel of vengeance, cathedral of thought, bone dome of despair,
plaza del toro y pensamientos,
    this museum of tribal dentistry, commodity cranium cupboard, petrified dream catcher,
    this sun-ruined basketball I haul—rotted gray along the seams—perpetual missed shot,
    this insomnia podium, little bowl in a big fish, brain amphitheater, girl in the moon,
    this 3 a.m. war bell,
duende
vision prison,
    this single-scoop vanilla head rush, thunder head, fastball, lightning rod,
    this mad scientist in a white lab helmet, ghost of Smoking Mirror,
    this coyote beacon, calcium corral of pale perlino ponies,
    this desert seed I am root to, night-blooming cereus, gourd gone rattle,
    this Halloween crown, hat rack, worry contraption, Rimbaud’s drunken boat, blazing chandelier,
casa de relámpago,
    this coliseum
venatio
: Borges’s other tiger licking the empty shell of Lorca’s white
tortuga,
    this underdressed godhead, forever-hatching egg, this mug again and again at my lips,

    and all this because tonight I imagined you sleeping with her
    the way we once slept—as intimate as a jaw, maxilla and mandible hot,
    in the skin—in love, our heads almost touching.

I Lean Out the Window and She Nods Off in Bed, the Needle Gently Rocking on the Bedside Table

    While she sleeps, I paint
    Valencia oranges across her skin,
    seven times the color orange,
    a bright tree glittering the limestone grotto of her clavicle—
    heaving bonfires pulsing each pale limb
    like Nero’s condemned heretics sparking along Via Appia.

    A small stream of Prussian blue I’ve trickled
    down her bicep. A fat red nasturtium
    eddies her inner elbow.

    Against her swollen palms,
    I’ve brushed glowing halves of avocados
    lamping like bell-hipped women in ecstasy.

    A wounded Saint Teresa sketched to each breast.

    Her navel is a charcoal bowl of figs,
    all stem thick with sour milk and gowned
    in taffeta the color of bruises.

    This to offer up with our flophouse prayers—

    God created us with absence
    in our hands, but we will not return that way.
    Not now, when we are both so capable of growing full
    on banquets embroidered by Lorca’s gypsy nun.

    She sleeps, gone to the needle’s gentle rocking,
    and I lean out the window, a Horus
    drunk on my own scent
    and midnight’s slow drip of stars.

    She has always been more orchard than loved,
    I, more bite than mouth.

    So much is empty in this hour—
    the spoon, still warm, lost in the sheets,
    the candle’s yellow-white thorn of flame,
    a vanishing ribbon of jade smoke,
    and night, open as autumn’s unfilled basket
    as the locusts feast the field.

Monday Aubade

    with a line from Rimbaud

    To be next to you again,

    to feel the knob of your pelvic bone,
    the door of your hip opening
    to a room of light
    where a fuchsia blouse hangs
    in the closet of a conch shell,
    the silhouette of a single red-mouthed bell;

    to shut my eyes one more night

    on the delta of shadows
    between your shoulder blades—
    mysterious wings tethered inside
    the pale cage of your body—run through
    by Lorca’s horn of moonlight,
    strange unicorn loose along the dim streets
    separating our skins;

    to be still again knowing

    the bow of your spine, the arc of your torso—
    a widening road to an alabaster mountain,
    a secret path to a cliff overlooking a