La Cuenta, and: We Had to Become Doves: An American Sonnet

La Cuenta^[1]

You flash me a smileUna sonrisita sin motivo, sin explicaciónYou twirl in your leather jacket—the fringeGrazes my arm. That is the distance from which I love youThere are too many people to share you withWhat am I supposed to do?

A little here, a little thereI am only as good as theworst of our people

Ya tengo mi tesoro en nuestro amorI'll order your dresses, white satin capes that tie at the waistI'll count and recount the moneyI can do it, I can do it wellA couple of times, you've held my handYour Coty powder is my skinBut there are so many people to share you withWhat am I supposed to do?

A little here, a little thereYou are only as goodas the worst of your people

I'll iron your diamonds—estos son los tiempos que guardo yoIn the moonlight, my ring is a flash of silver in your hand Ibreathe into your shine but can't keep living like this, I can'ttime my love bomb in different little tiempos. So it went offThe total came in through my moonroof, my todos tiemposMe: the No in the Yo. I can't love different than meI'm not enough moonstoneMe: I'm the little room

We Had to Become Doves: An American Sonnet

After Shirin Neshat

Distance has been coachwhip snakes, slithering along a creek. I am sorry        you cannot return. I had to leave home to see it, too, to see my bodyand the garments I was wearing. Her dangers; the epistemology        of survival as privilege. It is not one or the other. But you and I both get to see from afar,taste the pistachio of the past, our hands washed with rose water, the distilled        present. In your dreams, Mexico stands in for Iran. Morocco is the understudy for Algiers.Perhaps, LA becomes Honduras. Tehran. Pupusas are not the same        as gorditas. Baleadas are not quesadillas. Don't even try it. We know toowhat it's like to be kept out by missile necklaces and barbed paperwork. By men        fatigued with because-I-said-so-s. We became owls to properly hunt, to dropremedies from freeway overpasses. Our feathers mechanical. Our wings fold        into boats. We are ready to burn. To smash into the waves. Some days we commune with themoon. Some nights, we trade secrets with the stag. I'm the girl folding        her white wings into a plastic bag. Sometimes home is inside and cannot be taken away—your imagination, the place where two rivers meet, the ink on our hands.        Let us greet the sun where genders are miles of rattlesnakes cultivating venom.There on the shore where women push boats out to sea. We are left on the land        and watch our daughter float away. We fill our fangs with antidotes. Shootprayers with a shell. Slip into secrets, live oaks, femme bodies where we grow        into thousands and thousands of branches.