Tijuana Book of the Dead Read online

  no big thing.

  just shit

  happens.

  it only took me

  about twenty six years

  to pull

  that trigger.

  I said,

  listen, carnal,

  you can drop me

  anywhere along here—

  I can walk home

  from right here.

  he wasn’t mad—he was laughing—he knew fear was funny / he

  dug fear like some people dig laughter: oh, he dug laughter

  too: he dug what you and I dig: he dug his daughter and

  he dug his wife and he dug spring and he dug chocolate: he dug

  his way out of prison didn’t he / he said

  hey now, homeboy,

  did I scare you?

  don’t be like that.

  I thought we were just talking

  about poems.

  OME

  48 Roadsongs

  Flashpoems: Driving I-10

  I-25, I-40, I-70.

  1.

  Storm over the Rockies,

  drop solo out of sawblade

  clouds on I-70

  mtns cut to

  mesas

  Buffalo Bill’s buried still

  atop Lookout Mtn, but

  grave’s gone into this tundra

  of rain.

  2.

  Guy says: a mesa’s wider

  than it is tall; a butte’s

  • • •

  taller than it is

  wide. You

  squeeze another 35 cents

  unleaded into the tank.

  3.

  Gray thief fog

  sneaks through Grand Junction,

  tucks weedy lots

  into its sack, even rabbits

  feel safe

  from the falcon.

  4.

  Last night

  a cricket said

  Neruda, Neruda, Neruda.

  5.

  Trucks

  dive

  into

  snow

  squalls:

  • • •

  pale

  paler

  gone.

  6.

  Winter wheat

  stalks bend: red

  bows fiddle sky.

  7.

  Crows

  on that telephone line: restless necklace black laughing

  pearls.

  8.

  Magpie

  pecking a snowbank:

  poemless page &

  spilled inkwell.

  9.

  Green River.

  • • •

  Fog shreds

  in wind:

  a pine steps forward,

  and another.

  10.

  rust

  car wreck

  rattlegrass

  clover

  burrheads

  dog bones

  bottleglass

  lizard

  here’s a poem:

  pumpjacks.

  11.

  Stormclouds

  upside down

  Alps

  rain drops

  little Bavarians

  climbing to the dirt.

  12.

  Words left on walls:

  spider with a mountain skin

  skin is always a monster

  snake rainbow

  take wing tiny baby

  13.

  Midnight.

  Her nipple

  hides

  the volcano.

  14.

  Billboards in this storm

  advertise sorrow.

  15.

  Pickup trucks in snowstorms

  amass gradual loads of white

  haul winter 99 miles.

  16.

  Beau Jocque

  and the Zydeco High Rollers

  Caifanes

  Wall of Voodoo

  Concrete Blonde

  Café Tacuba

  Catherine Wheel

  Love and Rockets

  Maldita Vecindad

  Lila Downs Tonantzin

  17.

  She next morning still

  blooming on his fingers.

  18.

  Car cuts down the ramps colliding

  head-on with each tomorrow: no

  where in particular, man, you say

  in the diner, just going

  19.

  anywhere, America, just going,

  you know?

  20.

  one raindrop somersaults a butterfly

  21.

  Crows shit

  into the Grand Canyon

  nature lovers

  22.

  deer freeze

  • • •

  car radio

  passes

  23.

  A wedge of crying geese

  rusts

  in empty sky.

  24.

  October

  signifying

  October

  25.

  Glove caught in roadside tree

  waves to pilgrims

  who’ll not return.

  26.

  coffee in a Kansas gas station

  the wind

  big rigs

  nude magazines

  looking everywhere for home

  27.

  Snaketown, Twilight Zone, Kansas. Old building behind a gas

  station. “6

  Legged Steer” Alive! “5 Legged Cow.” Dead cars and wrecks

  parked in

  weeds across the front to lure wanderers in: looks like ghosts

  of Interstate

  midnight pulled up to spend $5 on the rattlesnake pits, the

  mutant animal

  zoo. Oakley, Kansas ground to powder by scudding black

  pumice of

  clouds. Wooden pits with chicken wire roofs give up the smell

  of rattles,

  snakes, skin, snakeshit, dead mice, poison. The man at the

  counter bangs

  on the wire: panicked sizzle of rattles rising, behind him

  rattlesnake heads,

  snake skin belts, snake teeth, snake head baseball caps,

  snakeskull belt buckles.

  Out back, 6 legged steers, coyotes dreaming of the prairie,

  badgers pacing

  concrete. Tornadoes vector in on us, and the man behind

  the counter

  tells us these jokes: Yesterday we had a baby snake that broke

  out crying.

  Boo-hoo. Boo-hoo. You know why? ’Cause he broke

  28.

  his rattle! Hey!

  It’s Saturday. Do you know

  what cows do

  around here on Saturday

  nights? Go

  to the moo-

  vies!

  29.

  her legs converge twin stems shadowed lily

  30.

  Snow

  31.

  If I remain

  still,

  I can taste

  her breast.

  So strange

  her texture

  creams my

  tongue.

  32.

  Eyegames or Old Age:

  LUBE

  OIL &

  TUNEUP

  • • •

  becomes, in rainy light:

  LIVE

  GILA

  MONSTER

  33.

  Despairing of God, I came to the desert seeking saints.

  The tongue of the tribe sleeping in my family

  whispers spiny songs: chumampaco_/ place where they killed

  the dogs: huirives_/ bird: bacochibampo / the water of the

  serpents: bajeribampo_/ the water of the lizards: cuirimpo_/

  the place of the drummers.

  The freeway is the phrasebook

  of the dreamers:

  I will write—giostebareme.

  Sing me
a song—nech-che-biu-graia.

  The sun is coming out—apo-po a-liey-ya.

  Delépane. Good-bye.

  34.

  Good-bye.

  35.

  America’s a page

  of Kerouac: disjointed dharma poems in the brain

  unspooling highways, paper rolls/black ink

  black light/black coffee and doughnuts/black

  berry jam on yer toast, honey/black sabbath

  black magic/slap the black off you/black

  eyed susans flouncing in ditches from here

  to the Black Hills of sleeping South

  Dakota, Crazy

  Horse mtn flexing up

  from the pine shadows, arm raised

  into the sunrise as if the ghosts

  of the tribes could rise: wheels

  clickclack the fast lane like keys

  of a wasted Underwood out of date

  but typing, haunted, weeds fingering

  the letters in a junkyard, some kind of

  haiku: AM radio

  sings its toilet paper hymns—cigarettes,

  hamburgers, sports at ten till the hour,

  conspiracies. Today

  was tomorrow

  yesterday. Today

  was tomorrow

  yesterday.

  36.

  Loneliness

  family far off

  rainstorm

  37.

  My breath

  throws clouds

  down the road:

  I follow.

  38.

  sips coffee in that window:

  lone woman at sunrise

  39.

  while mockingbird

  insults

  the dawn

  40.

  white lingerie on the clothesline nets my desire like a fish

  41.

  r/n/d/r/p/s

  42.

  she lets down her hair. waterfall

  43.

  All summer

  she brought me

  meadows in

  her skirt.

  44.

  Roadkill

  armadillo:

  • • •

  ants load up, scurry

  dismantling armor

  mechanic chefs cart snippets

  in a dilly.

  45.

  Earth asleep, winter

  comes: snowflakes:

  10 million closing eyelids.

  46.

  4 in the morning

  and the Marlboro man’s still smoking

  by the dead gas pumps,

  thirty foot sign

  lights like comets

  burning over his head.

  47.

  red Mustang

  neon

  sunflowers

  Stuckey’s

  trading post

  corn

  here’s a poem:

  • • •

  pumpjacks

  nod me home.

  48.

  Delépane.

  Ama-ni-huella, Dios tata itom Jicori.

  Delépane,

  delépane,

  delépane.

  Gone.

  Sonoran Desert Sutras

  (Selected Notes on Writing The Hummingbird’s Daughter / Queen of America in the Arizona Desert.)

  For Brian Andrew Laird

  Despairing of God

  I went to the desert

  to seek my own saint.

  #

  She had no poems—

  I learned alone to sing out

  our summer sorrows.

  #

  Haunted adobe—

  candelabra’s melting stubs

  wax that fell was black.

  #

  If I went downstairs,

  heard kitchen racket overhead—

  nobody else there.

  #

  Disembodied hand

  tarantula-crawled across

  white sheet to my face.

  #

  Medicine woman

  cooking her green tamales

  held me when I wept.

  #

  Beer with Chuck Bowden.

  Three o’clock coffee with Laird.

  Writers at The Cup.

  #

  Sunset desert hikes

  meeting javelina gods

  white roadrunner guide.

  #

  In the old archive

  librarian grabbed my hands

  and cried, “Please heal me!”

  #

  Drove Ed Abbey’s car

  no muffler up to Denver—

  ghost in Cadillac.

  #

  Someone set a fire

  and tried to burn our house down

  slit apart the bed.

  #

  on the tortillas

  in the refrigerator—

  one dead rattlesnake.

  #

  men target shooting

  at fake clay pigeon CDs—

  Front 242.

  #

  The medicine man

  said, “I will give you a dream”—

  gave me green rock: dreams.

  #

  Teresita came

  walking from the other side,

  brought me white flowers.

  #

  San Xavier del Bac

  lit Teresita candles

  hillside holy hours.

  #

  Three a.m. hiking

  in the desert with women

  who laughed in the dark.

  #

  Watching the comet

  at the end of the highway

  her hip cocked on mine.

  #

  No, don’t speak his name!

  I heard the Knocker Angel

  pounding on my door.

  #

  So many devils

  unleashed by the medicine

  I slept with a knife.

  #

  My teacher took me

  to ask questions of the plants—

  I felt like a child.

  #

  Halloween midnight

  one wrecked car blocking the road—

  single human leg.

  #

  One box Minute Rice—

  one old cat, half deaf, half blind—

  abandoned to trust.

  #

  Yaqui funeral—

  old man in his black coffin

  colder than the moon.

  #

  First monsoon morning—

  I finally saw miracles—

  frogs leaped from the ground.

  #

  Female medium

  insisted spirits told her—

  I signed questionnaire.

  #

  Tinajas Altas—

  couldn’t find any water,

  someone left a can.

  #

  After the car wreck

  100 trucks drove over

  the children’s clothing.

  #

  At old copper mine

  pondering the day’s lessons

  coyotes stalked me.

  #

  The angry scholar

  called to threaten a lawsuit

  if I wrote the book.

  #

  She said we were twins

  separated in heaven—

  did I want to party?

  #

  The Hotel Congress

  was still a holy vortex—

  Dillinger slept there.

  #

  Down in Mexico

  the curanderas fed me

  bowls of green Jell-O.

  #

  Teresita’s niece

  wakes up on certain mornings

  floating in the air.

  #

  Standing in graveyards

  in Clifton, Arizona—

  thought I might find her.

  #

  “I’m their worst nightmare!”

  he
said in his adobe—

  “Liberal with guns!”

  #

  Medicine woman

  said she missed grandmother’s ghost

  since it left with me.

  #

  The saint’s grand-daughter

  heals families in Phoenix—

  danced for Dean Martin.

  #

  Holy woman said,

  “In heaven you’ll have a job!”

  shaking her finger.

  #

  When down to nothing

  the spirits bring miracles—

  one dollar Whopper.

  #

  Hiking Sheep Pen trail

  vulture flew up behind me—

  my shadow grew wings.

  #

  Mostly it was work

  alone on old computer—

  Nine Inch Nails all night.

  #

  I learned something there

  From the Saint of Cabora—

  Every day’s sacred.

  YEI

  Teocalli Blues

  For Santino Rivera

  Dangling from this desvelada,

  angling along this workday flojera,

  navigating dawn-wet streets

  brainwash myself again:

  rain washed heaven’s scent

  down the sidewalk grates,

  no smoke from the copal—

  orale vato—got those Levi’s apretaditos