Our Lady of the Midnight Kitchen, and: South of the Border

Our Lady of the Midnight Kitchen

Beans float like baby Jesuses in the soup.I get a call from a lost one-eyed cousin:he says the world is big enough in one place.

I was sleeping in a cold room when the sun came up.My eyes were open, my mouth bloody, full of cat-clawsand nettles. Always my life unravels like the hem

of your old robe. We go home the long way—the wind,sharpness of new rain, street sinking into my shoes.Sky the gorgeous maroon I so love. At night

I gather all my missing pieces, wait for dawn.The cat hauls his fat body upto lie like a sack of diamonds at our feet.

South of the Border

There's a lot of Mexico in every marriage.

—David Wagoner

Darling, if only we'd stayed in bed yesterday,you wouldn't be snorkeling on a full stomachwith her. We'd have been mildly drunk and well-fed.Now schools of blue fish are dodging your flippers.

Yesterday, just like a tourist, you bought a new hat.I'm feeling deflated, beginning to feel rather flattened out,like a flounder. (I want to say squid, but reallyI'm rounder than that, not so elongate,

despite exercise and fussy avoidance of fat.)Here I am, lying on the bay floor, my twonaked eyes staring up as four legs go scissoring past.I watch thunderclouds piling up on your backs.

A rainstorm pocks the water's smooth blue.You both scurry, crab-like, to the cabanain pink and green swimsuits—fluorescent, no less.Just watching you run makes me want a divorce.

You drink your tequila straight and don't minda worm now and then. The cantina lights spinand spin. Honey, under that new sombrero,your black moustache looks almost authentic.