Breadcrumb #491
MONCHO ALVARaDO
I held forty years of woman in my hands
feet blazed copper from ten hour shifts,
I would massage Vaporub, feel each crack,
scrape, cut, blister, sneaker mold & corn
Ama’s breathing: a bouquet of air
longing, a bloom I learned
from her with every breath:
a simple forever
hands a dusk, open
nothing, save possibility
when she would dinner:
pieces of meat with bone, water,
chile verde sauce: savory in shades,
the bone velvet on my tongue, opens
to marrow: coarse and soft like soil,
I sucked the dying
& let go of words:
a nakedness in hot desert,
brilliant rays bleed on me
the ritual of sacrifice,
a towards, a refusal,
a never, a courage,
born with all this, oh
Ama, I’m still
learning
light exhausts into everything,
expecting nothing back