Finally, my new book, Life in the Body, will be published The Los Angeles Press. As a preview, I’m sharing another poem from the book. A new poem, “Primary Colors.” Stay tuned for more news about the book and a reading at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor, NY and other venues. Hopefully on Zoom from Los Angeles too.
Primary Colors
Our recent journey remains a pulse,
a kind of brain tinnitus, insistent memory.
Visceral desire and satisfaction entwined.
It’s hot. We’re wearing big brim hats,
look like Americans in love
with bougainvillea and marigolds,
carpets and serapes, table runners,
woven flowers, birds, butterflies.
Multi-booth tent fair, crowded open lean-to shops,
silver jewelry, art and underwear, cafes
and quesadillas, guacamole and chocolate mole.
Painted onto hand hewn wooden whimsy,
chimeric puzzle beings: serpents
elephants and jaguars, cats and kittens,
spots and hues, stripes and marks.
Lucky eye charms for protection
look like they can see.
Folk art everywhere.
Structures from adobe to Baroque.
We negotiate broken sidewalks, holes and cracks
from years of tremors.
Mexico City feels like Paris.
Culture, art and architecture,
but strained, crumbling infrastructure.
Frida’s house, I’m in tears.
I stand in awe before her easel and paints,
her pain evoked in everything she made.
Her bed, a mirror hung above, for her
to witness crippled beauty and transform
her broken body into art.
Diego’s murals scattered through the house.
(Those two were a karmic pair, like us.)
The first day of our vacation
Putin’s troops marched into Ukraine.
We are never far away from
all the danger elsewhere.