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Einstein’s happiest moment occurred when he realized a falling man falling beside a falling apple could also be described as an apple and a man at rest while the world falls around them. And my happiest moment occurred when I realized you were falling for me, right down to the core, and the rest, relatively speaking, has flown past faster than the speed of light.

Either she was foul, or her attire was bad, Or she was not the wench I wished t’have had. Idly I lay with her, as if I loved not, And like a burden grieved the bed that moved not. Yet though both of us performed our true intent, Yet I could not cast anchor where I meant. She on my neck her ivory arms did throw, Her arms far whiter than the Scythian snow. And eagerly she kissed me with her tongue, And under mine her wanton thigh she flung. Yea, and she soothed me up and called me sir, And used all speech that might provoke and stir. Yet, like as if cold hemlock I had drunk, It mockèd me, hung down the head, and sunk. Like a dull cipher or rude block I lay, Or shade or body was I, who can say? What will my age do, age I cannot shun, When in my prime my force is spent and done? I blush, that being youthful, hot and lusty, I prove neither youth nor man, but old and rusty. Pure rose she, like a nun to sacrifice, Or one that with her tender brother lies. Yet boarded I the golden Chie twice, And Libas, and the white-cheeked Pitho thrice. Corinna craved it in a summer’s night, And nine sweet bouts we had before daylight. What, waste my limbs through some Thessalian charms? May spells and drugs do silly souls such harm? With virgin wax hath some imbaste my joints And pierced my liver with sharp needles’ points? Charms change corn to grass and make it die. By charms are running spring and fountains dry. By charms mast crops from oaks, from vines grapes fall, And fruit from trees when there’s no wind at all. Why might not then my sinews be enchanted, And I grow faint, as with some spirit haunted? To this add shame: shame to perform it quailed me And was the second cause why vigour failed me. My idle thoughts delighted her no more Than did the robe or garment which she wore. Yet might her touch make youthful Pylius fire And Tithon livelier than his years require. Even her I had, and she had me in vain; What might I crave more if I asked again? I think the great gods grieved they had bestowed The benefit which lewdly I for-slowed. I wished to be received in. In I get me To kiss. I kiss. To lie with her, she let me. Why was I blessed? Why made king to refuse it? Chuff-like had I not gold and could not use it? So in a spring thrives he that told so much, And looks upon the fruits he cannot touch. Hath any rose so from a fresh young maid, As she might straight have gone to church and prayed? Well I believe she kissed not as she should, Nor used the sleight and cunning which she could. Huge oaks, hard adamants might she have moved, And with sweet words cause deaf rocks to have loved. Worthy she was to move both gods and men, But neither was I man, nor lived then. Can deaf ear take delight when Phaemius sings? Or Thamiras in curious painted things? What sweet thought is there but I had the same? And one gave place still as another came. Yet, notwithstanding, like one dead it lay, Drooping more than a rose pulled yesterday. Now, when he should not jet, he bolts upright And craves his task, and seeks to be at fight. Lie down with shame, and see thou stir no more, Seeing thou wouldst deceive me as before. Thou cozenest me, by thee surprised am I, And bide sore loss with endless infamy. Nay more, the wench did not disdain a whit To take it in her hand and play with it. But when she saw it would by no means stand, But still drooped down, regarding not her hand, ‘Why mockst thou me?’ she cried. ‘Or, being ill, Who bade thee lie down here against thy will? Either thou art witch, with blood of frogs new dead, Or jaded camest thou from some other bed.’ With that, her loose gown on, from me she cast her – In skipping out her naked feet much graced her. And, lest her maid should know of this disgrace, To cover it, spilt water on the place.

there are some things up there uptown I want to see I want to see    I'm going to look at that and see I want to go up and see that show. That show I went to see, I went to see. There are some things up there   uptown I want to look at that and see. I'm going to see what I look. What I look at, when I look, vessel, I stood to see. I went to stand to look to see. Venturing further I went outside myself to look at that wall. It fed! There was a box inside that was not blank, I saw it. It was really different from an aura, the thing had colors, the thing was talking to itself. And spoke to me, not incidentally.

We have a friend in common, the retired sophomore. His concern: that I shall get it like that, in the right and righter of a green bush chomping on future considerations. In the ghostly dreams of others it appears I am all right, and even going on tomorrow there is much to be said on all these matters, “issues,” like “No rest for the weary.” (And yet—why not?) Feeling under orders is a way of showing up, but stepping on Earth—she’s not going to. Ten shades of pleasing himself brings us to tomorrow evening and will be back for more. I disagree with you completely but couldn’t be prouder and fonder of you. So drink up. Feel good for two. I do it in a lot of places. Subfusc El Dorado is only one that I know something about. Others are recently lost cities where we used to live—they keep the names we knew, sometimes. I do it in a lot of places. Brash brats offer laughing advice, as though anything I cared about could be difficult or complicated now. That’s the rub. Gusts of up to forty-five miles an hour will be dropping in later on tonight. No reason not to. So point at the luck we know about. Living is a meatloaf sandwich. I had a good time up there.

Not a study or a den, but El Florida as my mother called it, a pretty name for the room with the prettiest view of the lipstick-red hibiscus puckered up against the windows, the tepid breeze laden with the brown-sugar scent of loquats drifting in from the yard. Not a sunroom, but where the sun both rose and set, all day the shadows of banana trees fan-dancing across the floor, and if it rained, it rained the loudest, like marbles plunking across the roof under constant threat of coconuts ready to fall from the sky. Not a sitting room, but El Florida, where I sat alone for hours with butterflies frozen on the polyester curtains and faces of Lladró figurines: sad angels, clowns, and princesses with eyes glazed blue and gray, gazing from behind the glass doors of the wall cabinet. Not a TV room, but where I watched Creature Feature as a boy, clinging to my brother, safe from vampires in the same sofa where I fell in love with Clint Eastwood and my Abuelo watching westerns, or pitying women crying in telenovelas with my Abuela. Not a family room, but the room where my father twirled his hair while listening to eight-tracks of Elvis, read Nietzsche and Kant a few months before he died, where my mother learned to dance alone as she swept, and I learned salsa pressed against my Tía Julia’s enormous breasts. At the edge of the city, in the company of crickets, beside the empty clothesline, telephone wires, and the moon, tonight my life is an old friend sitting with me not in the living room, but in the light of El Florida, as quiet and necessary as any star shining above it.

It is a dangerous thing to forget the climate of your birthplace, to choke out the voices of dead relatives when in dreams they call you by your secret name. It is dangerous to spurn the clothes you were born to wear for the sake of fashion; dangerous to use weapons and sharp instruments you are not familiar with; dangerous to disdain the plaster saints before which your mother kneels praying with embarrassing fervor that you survive in the place you have chosen to live: a bare, cold room with no pictures on the walls, a forgetting place where she fears you will die of loneliness and exposure. Jesús, María, y José, she says, el olvido is a dangerous thing.

El Patio de Mi Casa, 1990, by María Brito My patio was once a schoolyard, or maybe a barracoon, perhaps both, & the ghosts of children nest under the pink sink, mouths agape for flakes of rust, or they creep to the ceiling, sucking on the five taps of blue water, their little lips abuzz like cicadas. In the moonlight I see them bounce on my feather bed, bowed like an old donkey’s back, or they teeter-totter in my wicker chair darned with burlap string. Leave them alone, I say to my mother, who wants to cleanse the house with carvacrol, trapping these children’s souls in beehives, then stringing them up with kites so they fly to the moon. Let them drum our dented pots, let them screech happy carols, let them dance with tin spurs on their little feet. Mother, I don’t care if they nibble our family photos, soil your heirlooms of lace, or steal what few grains of rice (more like gypsum ants) you hoard in the pink pantry. Let them play cat’s cradle with spiderwebs, let them rummage in your armoire of moths, let them lurk in your shadows of ill will & tease you to laughter. Ghosts are unruly, free to be fickle, unlike me, the pig-tailed girl you kept strapped to the sewing machine in the shed of planks by the mango tree too old to fruit. Work & sweat will set you free, you said, just like Fidel on the radio. Cut me out of those sepia photos on the wall, burn those baby braids you keep in porcelain, toss my first communion gown into the sea. I wish I’d been born into a brood of mice, quick to grow, quick to breed, quick to die among the kapok trees.

In which everything goes backwards in time and motion Palm trees shrink back into the ground Mangos become seeds and reappear in the eyes of Indian women The years go back cement becomes wood Panama hats are seen upon skeletons walking the plazas Of once again wooden benches The past starts to happen again I see Columbus’s three boats going backwards on the sea Getting smaller Crossing the Atlantic back to the ports of Spain    Cadiz    Dos Palos    Huelva Where the sailors disembark and go back to their towns To their homes They become adolescents again become children                infants they re-enter the wombs of their mothers till they become glances Clutching a pound of bread through a busy plaza that becomes the taste of the sound of church bells in reverberation.

Salvador, if I return on a summer day, so humid my thumb will clean your beard of  salt, and if  I touch your volcanic face, kiss your pumice breath, please don’t let cops say:he’s gangster. Don’t let gangsters say:he’s wrong barrio. Your barrios stain you with pollen, red liquid pollen. Every day cops and gangsters pick at you with their metallic beaks, and presidents, guilty. Dad swears he’ll never return, Mom wants to see her mom, and in the news: every day black bags, more and more of us leave. Parents say: don’t go; you have tattoos. It’s the law; you don’t know what law means there. ¿But what do they know? We don’t have greencards. Grandparents say:nothing happens here. Cousin says:here, it’s worse. Don’t come, you could be... Stupid Salvador, you see our black bags, our empty homes, our fear to say:the war has never stopped, and still you lie and say:I’m fine, I’m fine, but if  I don’t brush Abuelita’s hair, wash her pots and pans, I cry. Like tonight, when I wish you made it easier to love you, Salvador. Make it easier to never have to risk our lives.

As apparent as the rest, the asphalt cracks are crowded with yellow weeds, the rust goes beyond its bleeding color, and the lot's rails, battered by cars, cast larger bars by noon. On one side of the market someone painted a row of flower pots, hanging geraniums for the locals who must now go across town. As apparent as the rest, El Tigre walks upright, wears a tiny sombrero and sarape, and pushes a grocery cart full of food. His painted stripes are starting to flake like the bounty he wheels for the families drifting into the parking lot off 3rd Street and next to the train station still waiting to the retrofitted for the big one.