Alberto Ríos

A yellow leaf in the branches Of a shamel ash In the front yard; I see it, a yellow leaf Among so many. Nothing distinguishes it, Nothing striking, striped, stripped, Strident, nothing More than its yellow On this day, Which is enough, which makes me Think of it later in the day, Remember it in conversation With a friend, Though I do not mention it— A yellow leaf on a shamel ash On a clear day In an Arizona winter, A January like so many.

I am a slave to the nudity of women. I do not know with what resolve I could stand against it, a naked woman Asking of me anything. An unclothed woman is sometimes other things. I see her in a dish of green pears. Anselmo, do you know what I mean if I say Without clothes Her breasts are the two lions In front of the New York Public Library, Do you know that postcard of mine? In those lions there is something For which I have in exchange Only sounds. Only my fingers. I see her everywhere. She is the lions And the pears, those letters of the alphabet As children we called dirty, the W, The Y, the small o. She is absolutely the wet clothing on the line. Or, you know, to be more intimate, May I? The nub, the nose of the pear, Do you know what I mean? Those parts of the woman I will call two Spanish dancer hats, Or rounder sometimes, doughboy helmets from the War. Sometimes they are flat in the late afternoon Asleep. Like drawings, Like a single rock thrown into the lake, These parts of a woman an imperfect circling Gyre of lines moving out, beyond the water. They reach me at the shore, Anselmo. Without fail, they are stronger, And they have always been faster than I am. It’s like watching the lassoing man, The man with the perfectly circling rope, Pedro Armendariz in the Mexican movies, Or Will Rogers. Wherever one is from, Whoever this man is. And he is always there. Everybody knows one. He always makes his big lasso, twirling his rope Around himself and a woman from the audience Only I am the woman, do you understand, Anselmo? Caught in the circling rope. I am the woman And me thinking of a woman Without clothes Is that man and that rope And we are riding on separate horses.

for my father 1 When the thought came to him it was so simple he shook his head. People are always looking for kidneys when their kidneys go bad. But why wait? Why not look when you’re healthy? If two good kidneys do the trick, wouldn’t three do the job even better?

The fire was so fierce, So red, so gray, so yellow That, along with the land, It burned part of the sky Which stayed black in that corner For years, As if it were night there Even in the daytime, A piece of the sky burnt And which then Could not be counted on Even by the birds. It was a regular fire— Terrible—we forget this About fire—terrible And full of pride. It intended to be Big, no regular fire. Like so many of us, It intended to be more And this time was. It was not better or worse Than any other fire Growing up. But this time, it was a fire At just the right time And in just the right place— If you think like a fire— A place it could do something big. Its flames reached out With ten thousand pincers, As if the fire Were made of beetles and scorpions Clawing themselves to get up, Pinching the air itself And climbing, So many sharp animals On each other’s backs Then into the air itself, Ten thousand snaps and pinches At least, So that if the sky Was made of something, It could not get away this time. Finally the fire Caught the sky, Which acted like a slow rabbit Which had made a miscalculation. It didn’t believe this could happen And so it ran left, Right into the thin toothpicks of flames, Too fast to pull back, The sky with all its arms, Hands, fingers, fingernails, All of it Disappeared. Goodbye. The sky stayed black For several years after. I wanted to tell you This small story About the sky. It’s a good one And explains why the sky Comes so slowly in the morning, Still unsure of what’s here. But the story is not mine. It was written by fire, That same small fire That wanted to come home With something of its own To tell, And it did, A small piece of blue in its mouth.

The easiest sadness is a boy Watching another boy Walk with a barefooted girl, clean Perfect feet, that kind of nose, Eyes like those he’s dreamed In the dream that comes back. A boy watching another boy lucky Gets an ache That is a small motor. In me there is an animal, And in that animal There is a hunger. I remember the boy Watching a boy. It was me. Watching, I was a little bit The boy walking. I was both of us. That’s how it felt. What I could not have, That’s what I was Inside, an ache Coming as I stood Too many places.

William cut a hole in his Levi’s pocket so he could flop himself out in class behind the girls so the other guys could see and shit what guts we all said. All Konga wanted to do over and over was the rubber band trick, but he showed everyone how, so nobody wanted to see anymore and one day he cried, just cried until his parents took him away forever. Maya had a Hotpoint refrigerator standing in his living room, just for his family to show anybody who came that they could afford it. Me, I got a French kiss, finally, in the catholic darkness, my tongue’s farthest half vacationing loudly in another mouth like a man in Bermudas, and my body jumped against a flagstone wall, I could feel it through her thin, almost nonexistent body: I had, at that moment, that moment, a hot girl on a summer night, the best of all the things we tried to do. Well, she let me kiss her, anyway, all over. Or it was just a flagstone wall with a flaw in the stone, an understanding cavity for burning young men with smooth dreams— the true circumstance is gone, the true circumstances about us all then are gone. But when I kissed her, all water, she would close her eyes, and they into somewhere would disappear. Whether she was there or not, I remember her, clearly, and she moves around the room, sometimes, until I sleep. I have lain on the desert in watch low in the back of a pick-up truck for nothing in particular, for stars, for the things behind stars, and nothing comes more than the moment: always now, here in a truck, the moment again to dream of making love and sweat, this time to a woman, or even to all of them in some allowable way, to those boys, then, who couldn’t cry, to the girls before they were women, to friends, me on my back, the sky over me pressing its simple weight into her body on me, into the bodies of them all, on me.

Everything’s been said But one last thing about the desert, And it’s awful: During brush fires in the Sonoran desert, Brush fires that happen before the monsoon and in the great, Deep, wide, and smothering heat of the hottest months, The longest months, The hypnotic, immeasurable lulls of August and July— During these summer fires, jackrabbits— Jackrabbits and everything else That lives in the brush of the rolling hills, But jackrabbits especially— Jackrabbits can get caught in the flames, No matter how fast and big and strong and sleek they are. And when they’re caught, Cornered in and against the thick Trunks and thin spines of the cactus, When they can’t back up any more, When they can’t move, the flame— It touches them, And their fur catches fire. Of course, they run away from the flame, Finding movement even when there is none to be found, Jumping big and high over the wave of fire, or backing Even harder through the impenetrable Tangle of hardened saguaro And prickly pear and cholla and barrel, But whichever way they find, What happens is what happens: They catch fire And then bring the fire with them when they run. They don’t know they’re on fire at first, Running so fast as to make the fire Shoot like rocket engines and smoke behind them, But then the rabbits tire And the fire catches up, Stuck onto them like the needles of the cactus, Which at first must be what they think they feel on their skins. They’ve felt this before, every rabbit. But this time the feeling keeps on. And of course, they ignite the brush and dried weeds All over again, making more fire, all around them. I’m sorry for the rabbits. And I’m sorry for us To know this.

Ventura because she was hungry and because She was curious—but more because she was curious— Took the dare, a kiss for a pomegranate. Everyone gathered, her friends and his. Everyone Watched: the boys, the girls, the pigs and the chickens, And more. Moving to the front were the children She and Clemente would one day have, And the children of those children, too, Gathered and loud with everyone and everything else, Loud as the pigs and fast as the chickens Though she could not see them. Still, they crowded her, and she could feel Their anxious breathing. This boy Clemente whom she would kiss She would have kissed even without the pomegranate, Though she could not say it And was glad of this game. He suited her, She thought. He had a strong face. He felt what she felt. She could see him look around But not at their friends. She could see him Feel the shiver of the children they would have: Their son Margarito, his two sisters Both of whom would become nuns If just to pray enough to take care of him, This boy so serious he would seem like a stranger In their arms, serious enough by himself To make up for Clemente and Ventura And for all the laughter They themselves would feel, This curious child who, as an old man Would never trust a doctor for anything. And his serious wife to come, Refugio, And her sisters, Matilde and Consuelo as well, All the people who would follow this kiss, So many of them, and their children, too, Everyone stood there, arms up, everyone watching, So much noise in this moment, This quick lending of herself To his cheek, the way Ventura would later kiss All these impatient children of theirs. The kiss Seemed so small, but was filled with itself. This small moment of affection she gave this boy The quarter-second that it took: There they all stood, waiting with the crowd Egging them on, hefting the pomegranate And pushing them toward each other. Clemente and Ventura in that quarter-second lived Their lives, a quarter-second not finished yet.

Baltazár went to the market and came home with a parrot. Thursdays in this town were always just so: What should have been four big potatoes and some white cheese Came home in a cage filled with green feathers and two wings. The mathematics of exchange in this world, the stomach or the heart— Which of these, how much of one for the other, Friday would have to sort out. On a Thursday afternoon The world sang, a full dinner this way coming through the air.

Under a heavy wire milk case, A piece of concrete foundation On top, in summer, in her backyard, Mrs. Russo keeps the cat Nikita safe From birds, from dogs, from eating Johnson grass, which he throws up. Nikita waits for ants to wander in And for the sun to leave. Instead, she comes to keep him Company, saying You look fat And that her son died, Remember I told you? Walking thin in his uniform On a road.