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

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