Poeta en Nueva York
Nadie es profeta en su tierra.
—San Lucas 4:24
For Elizabeth Moe
¿viste la grieta azul de la luna rota?
Lorca, 5 am and I am slathered in Spain:
cologne, exhaust, coffee, chorizo, the tang
of an old body that needs to be washed.
I’m on the top floor. 18 West 10th Street.
The Emma Lazarus house: “Send these,
the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
I hold my passport, covered in stamps.
I’ve double-checked it twice. The moon
in the window is crinkled up like Kleenex.
Now more light—light, here and here,
then there and there—light, light, light,
light—on the Regency desk a framed photo
of Andrew and John, married at Althorp.
Lorca, two men I love who love each other—
what a privilege to witness a spoken love!
My suitcase open on the floor, wishes packed
like in the Declaration of Independence.
The doctors urged me to come: a stroke,
a brain bleed, my mother’s occipital lobe.
una de las dos españas ha de helarte el corazón
Lorca, the sun kisses the city like a Spaniard.
Kiss kiss! I see Wall Street over the balustrade,
where once there were two towers, now
one—everything eventually subtracts.
Frank Doyle, my classmate, died in that.
Frank knew what I now know, when you
become a ghost in one world you become
a guest in another. Leaves fall outside.
Lorca, I am not ready to speak English—
chopped syllables, the tongue less languid.
My mind still preoccupied with the tempo
of Spain, not ready to change languages
like clothes. Spain has no Puritanical itches.
Lorca, on the gay nude beach in Sitges
the empty church stuck out from the shore
like a giant body part. I laid my body down
with the rest and felt free as the sea crashed
against us. I work in a conservative church
in the gay district, the church loves me,
the district loves me, the two do not meet,
always I must deliberate over which is which.
lorca eran todos
Lorca, what time, what time is it?
My mother’s brain bleeds. Once we mounted
a festival in Madrid, and you were there.
Your niece helped me; her eyes so brown
they were black. Showed me your single bed,
how your body had molded the mattress.
The body. And the absence of the body.
All my life my mother and I asked what
countries ask: If we share everything, who are we?
Lorca, when young, in hullabaloo boots, her body
shook and was bound tight as upholstery.
In a moment of bashful pride, my mother said to me:
“I was very well-proportioned, darling.”
Doña Maria Teresa back in Madrid, a loyal member,
a former acrobat with tattoos, one misspelled
in English which I don’t have the heart to correct,
dresses her chihuahua in Elton John outfits,
places the semi-blind creature in a bassinet.
She needs paste for her dentures. I proceed
there before Grand Central to buy her Fixodent.
About love I will no longer be frugal.
dos tiros a garcía lorca en el culo, por maricón
Lorca, Santiago to Madrid we traveled—
five hours the Bishop and I sang flamenco,
passing pink isolated brothels where women
lay on mattresses chewing churros, waiting.
Our branch of the church did not approve
of marrying the gays which made me uneasy.
He attributed my dismay to being American.
America, my country of blabbermouths
and bleached teeth, people who slap their knees.
Nothing I could say to undo his choice.
Or so it seemed. How long could I abide?
Splat went the bugs as they caked the windshield.
I loved the Bishop which meant I loved him,
Lorca, no matter what he would decide.
“Who is your favorite poet?” I asked.
He was a gato, fifth generation Madrid.
He paused as more bugs splattered before us
and screamed: “Lorca!” I asked him why.
“He’s so sencillo!” by which he meant “clear.”
Lorca, your poems are the color of stars.
y echándole fuera de la ciudad, le apedrearon
Lorca, bullet holes against the wall in Granada,
some at eye level, others came up to my waist,
where they had knelt, that Goddamn civil war,
all the bodies without names. Christ, Spain—
squat, brown, glabrous, wide as you are tall,
rich as you are small—what happens to us now
that I no longer sit in your loveseat of a lap?
Nurses come. Doctors come. Knock, knock.
Lorca, it must be three in the afternoon.
The collected letters of Thom Gunn on my lap.
“Are you the son? The priest? From Spain?”
When you are a foreigner, your heart grows
restrained and restraint becomes who you are.
Connecticut tints the hall battleship gray
in the New London neuroscience wing.
My dear mother, you drool and have become
someone else, you look back, grow salty,
have lost language like luggage. My old love,
my love who gave me language that I love,
when there are no words, there are only acts.
Source: Poetry (November 2023)