Ray Gonzalez

Julius Caesar’s head was cut off and fed to the barbarians waiting outside the walls of Rome. Salvador Dali wore one orange sock and a white one on days he went to eat breakfast in cafes. On days he stared at the wall, he did not wear socks. Yukio Mishima sheathed his knives in wall of whale oil, claiming such creatures were the only ones that understood the art of sacrifice. The last thing John Lennon saw before he was gunned down was the brick wall of his apartment house. Sitting Bull had fourteen wives he lined up against the cliff walls. He would close his eyes and walk blindly to them with an erection, promising he would take the first one his erection touched. Crazy Horse watched silently from the cliff walls above. J. D. Salinger scribbled on his bedroom walls as a boy, promising his mother to whitewash the figures the first time he was caught. Joan of Arc climbed over the walls and fell on top of a castle guard, the commotion bringing soldiers who swore the wall opened and she escaped by stepping through. Nikita Khrushchev stared at the wall of nuclear buttons and knew it was a green one they told him to push, but the triggers were every color except green. Hernán Cortés’ men met a wall of arrows, then turned and ran. Montezuma’s men met a wall of armor, wept, then stoned their chief off the wall for helping the conquistadores. Carl Jung opened his eyes to find himself sleeping against a wall of flowers, the beautiful smell giving him the answer he had been looking for. Charlie Chaplin ordered his crew to remove the hidden mirror from the wall, footage of his latest lover overflowing onto the studio floor. Sor Juana de la Cruz hid her new poem in a hole in the wall, but when a fellow nun went to retrieve it after Sor Juana’s death, it was gone. The Dalai Lama stopped in the snow and bowed his head to pray before the wall of dead monks killed by the Chinese. Virginia Woolf’s last memory before drowning was the wall of family portraits, the photographs of her father and brothers so radiant in the river fog. Billy the Kid simply dug a hole in the adobe wall of the jail with his bare hands and walked away. Janis Joplin was found dead of an overdose in her Los Angeles hotel, her face facing the wall. Federico García Lorca did not face any walls when he was shot under the trees. No one knows how Tu Fu encased himself in a wall of bamboo, staying inside the tube for ten years, never saying a word, his feet becoming the roots of bamboo within the first few months of his silence. Al Capone stared at the walls of his cell in Alcatraz and added the bank figures again, trying to get them right. Babe Ruth heard a thud against the wall of his hotel suite, the baseball rolling down the hallways as a signal his tryst with the team owner’s wife about to be revealed. William Shakespeare stared at the empty walls of the theatre, stood there without saying a word, and stared at the empty walls of the theatre. Geronimo extended his arms over the walls of rock, the approaching sound of the cavalry troops echoing down the canyon, the pictograph Geronimo carved high on the wall, years ago, lifting him to safety. Two days before Salvador Allende was assassinated, Pablo Neruda, dying of cancer, woke at Isla Negra to find the walls of the room where he lay were covered in hundreds of clinging starfish.

They call the mountain Carlos because it is brown, though its purple slopes at dusk suggest other names. Those who name it have to brand the earth with something they know— a name, a face, even the heat that says "I know Carlos and he is the mountain. I am going to cover his eyes in light." They call its peak Carlos because it is the sharpest feature on the face that stares south, watching people cross the border, pausing to catch their breath and meet the cliffs of Carlos because he is there. When they ascend the canyons inside the face, Carlos shifts and the climbers discover what he has done. The moving earth changes everything and they are forced to stop playing the game of naming a mountain that keeps touching the sun.

Seven of them pinned in blood by long, shiny tails, three of them still alive and writhing against the wood, their heaviness whipping the wall as they try to break free, rattles beating in unison, hisses slowly dying in silence, the other four hanging stiff like ropes to another life, patterns of torn skin dripping with power and loss, the wonder of who might have done this turning in shock as all seven suddenly come alive when I get closer, pink mouths trembling with white fangs, lunging at me then falling back, entangled in one another to form twisted letters that spell a bloody word I can’t understand.

I sit with my railroad face and ask God to forgive me for being a straight line toward the dead who were buried with their poor clothes in the Arizona desert of iron borders. This way of waving to the embers of the past, not apologzing for carrying torn rosaries inside my pockets where beads of worry became fossilized insects whose dry husks I kept since a child. Faces adopted me from boys who hated their parents. I was told not to repeat this, reminded by the priest who unmasked himself. I was told there was a great horror down the hallway of the smelly Catholic school. Once, my friend Joey jumped off the second floor window and flattened his brains over the asphalt yard. I see a hibiscus blossom. It is a bright yellow flower that lasts one day. Its shape brings tears, saves me from the hummingbird that dots the air with patterns resembling an alphabet too familiar to smell like a railroad worker. I love heaven when I admit the spikes and the railroad ties came from the labor of fate and not the labor of love. The tracks are my cross. The tiny car is full of sweating men. They look into the eye of the sun, hold their hammers over their blackened heads. If staring grows in the common search, a perfume dots the heart with greed. Silence between the lightning of pounding stakes. Once, I rode the train home to see if the smoke from the speeding engine was going to enter my lungs. I never wore the old, yellow hat of the crew, but returned the shovel and the bag of railroad spikes, thought I saw my grandfather, the foreman, running across the desert in overalls, changing his skin from brown to the black of the scorched engine. I live with my railroad face, its smoothness hammered by sweating crews that knew the line of hot iron was going to end in the west someday. I live with my railroad face and don’t know why the tracks disappear on the horizon. I cross my railroad face and comb my hair.

Awake in the desert to the sound of calling. Must be the mountain, I thought. The violent border, I assumed, though the boundary line between the living and the dead was erased years ago. Awake in the sand, I feared, old shoes decorated with razor wire, a heaven of light on the peaks. Must be time to get up, I assumed. Parked outside, Border Patrol vehicles, I had to choose. Awake to follow immigration shadows vanishing inside American walls, river drownings counted as they cross, Maria Salinas' body dragged out, her mud costume pasted with plastic bottles and crushed beer cans, black water flowing to bless her in her sleep. Must be the roar of illegal death, I decided, a way out of the current, though satellite maps never show the brown veins of the concrete channel. Awake in the arroyo of a mushroom cloud, I choke, 1945 explosion in the sand, eternal radioactive wind, the end of one war mutating the border into another that also requires fatal skills of young men because few dream the atomic bomb gave birth in the Jornado, historic trail behind the mountain realigned, then cut off from El Paso, the town surrounded with barbed wire, the new century kissing car bombs, drug cartels, massacres across the river, hundreds shot in ambushes and neighborhood soccer games that always score. Wake up, I thought, look south to the last cathedral in Juarez before its exploding bricks hurtle this way. Make the sign of the cross, open your eyes to one town, two cities, five centuries of praying in the beautiful dust.

on turning forty They draw me closer like the hands of one grandmother I kissed upon visiting her in the barrio. The magnets make me look at my waist, wondering why the ache is in the street, houses giving off stinking air, a magnetic field collecting old newspapers, broken-down cars, alleys where the drummer cowers before he beats on his bag of beer cans. I visit the irrigation canal that churns green and flows beyond the streets, wait for the alligator to swim by, the one released from the plaza long ago. I feel the pull toward the mongrel dog, the clicking of the magnets in the church, an attraction for open doorways. * I remove the magnet from my neck, a medal of a denied saint. I will never witness the migration of bats again, stand at the entrance of the caverns as bats shoot out of the opening, the evening bristling with their intelligence. The sky bruises against the horizon of yucca plants erect as magnets surrrounding the cavern, miles of yucca encircling the poles to protect them from the wind that pulls me into the hole. * He tells me to believe what I have seen, insists magnetic force comes from the blade, the woman wanting us to keep something for her. He says magnets are missing metals from an underground wound, a husband’s wrist broken by a slammed car hood, loyal dance of an old couple watching the street. He says tortillas and menudo attract flies. He learned red chili kills all life, insists magnets let him sleep fulfilled, delicious food he fixes long after his wife has died. He cries that the magnets get stronger when he peels the pods to find no difference in the seeds of hunger and the seeds of love. * I climb the rocks because the minerals are there, ascend to where I buried the seashell, rusted can, and pencil twenty-eight years ago. I reach the rocks because I am allowed one mountain, climbing to readjust the magnets. Then, I stand and look down. I clear my chest of a fist encountered up here, set my foot on the humming slab. I move to survive when I touch my heart. I climb higher before deciding to bend and dig.

Kick in the heart. Kick the starting lance. Throw the ground a word and stand back. The color of terror is the envy on body rags, the dragonfly war scraped off a painting inside the door. Kick the shame. Kick the falling dawn as fortunate. Throw the corrupted guest out the door. A sequence of rhythms bound for the light on your bed. On the eggplant cooked for the husband working late: an ant, a hair— the only thing said to race the mind. Take someone else’s voice and touch their ears. Make sure they hear you cry in their own whispers, their harangue. Kick the soil. Kick the sweet drowning as if you know the round jubilance of pear is afraid of a darkening spoon, a honey of flavor, the tender one who never touches your plate. The tired one who rations food to thank God eternity is here and there. Slip the eye the blue-black stranger, his instrument of scars and neglect, its tune of every wish besides the grave of a careless, quiet man. Shape his sound into the thumb asking for a ride in the years of not going anywhere. Kick the alphabet. Kick the hungry thigh and try again. Reduce yourself to a moving mouth, a solemn happiness that smells of the past, takes hold of the throat and teaches you to despise omens— ignore Apache mirrors on rock arches as if you knew what their scratchings meant. Kick the heart. Kick the starting lance. It moves deeper into the month of blinking neon where vertigo is perfume, desire foaming on your bare feet killed by frost, taken by the animal waking inside your holy cross— a figure of green gowns and things that follows you until you dance. Kick the truth. Kick the belly until it confesses. Admit you were fed by a woman flapping in the wind, told to sit there by a father who made her give birth to a shimmering head, your brain of flowers blossoming upon the body always first to confess. What snow is left is tired water unmoved by your seasonal words, your circle healing by slowing down, swelling to the size of God, yellow leaves in the blood nothing dangerous— this impulse, this kick to the brittle lake where the snow goes away.

For those who ran in the streets, there were no faces to welcome them back. José escaped and loved the war. For those who swam with bitterness of a scorched love, there was a rusted car to work on. For those who merely passed and reclined in prayer, there was the tower and the cross. For those who dedicated tongues to the living and dying, there were turquoise painted doorways. For those who left their children tied to the water heater, there was a shout and a name. For those whose world was real and beautiful, there was a cigarette and a saint. For those who asked José to stay and feed his children, there were flowers at their funerals. For those who carried a shovel tattooed on their backs, there was a wet towel and a bottle. For those who swept the street of superstition and lie, there was the house to come home to. For those who came home late and put their swollen feet up, there was love and the smell of dirty socks. For those who feared the devil and spit on his painted arms, there was a lesson in rosaries. For those who had to leave before the sun went down, there was asphalt and a bus. For those who stared at wet plaster and claimed the face of Christ appeared, there was confinement and stale bread. For those who talked with each other and said it was time to go, there was lead in the paint and on the tongue. For those who left children behind, there was a strange world of sulphur and sparrow nests. For those who accused their ancestors of eating salt, there were these hands tracing what was left after the sweat.

after Kees' "Travels in North America" 1.Santa Fe "The walls are old," he says. I turn in the plaza and nod to Weldon Kees, his face as dark as the cool shadows that surround us, walls keeping him safe, honoring his silence, though he comes to me to be led away. "The mountains out there are not old," he claims and slips his hands into his coat. We cross the street, each Indian blanket on the ground holding jewelry I would love to touch, but Kees and the Navajo man selling his crafts are whispering to the ground. Kees surprises me by entering the Museum of Arts. I follow him, the stone floor ringing with our footsteps, empty arches blending above. Kees stops and turns to me. "One can see only so much," he says. He leads me to the twisted dwarf, the tangles form of faith and death, arrows bristling from its muscled body, a sacrifice of the ugly encased in glass, Kees staring at the sculpture as if he knows why we really can't see it. He points to the deepest arrow and places a hand on my shoulder. "When you believe this, you are home," he tells me and walks out. 2.Albuquerque The Sangre de Cristo mountains are old and he is driving my car to the highest ridge, the valley below avoiding the bright moon, the same white light in the bay Kees wanted to touch before he left. "Mist and clouds are a lie," he claims. "Look down there. Men are running away." He drives slowly to the top and we get out, the autumn sun burning terraces into scrub cedars and piñon pines he wrote about when he crossed here long ago, standing on the edge of the cliff as if this is the only way for him to go. "Look past what you want to see," he sighs as the wind takes his slick hair and makes him into someone I have seen before, the streets of Albuquerque down there as dusty as his closed eyes. We stand on the edge and I wait at this elevation with Kees who wrote that the towns we will not visit are places where home truly lies. "I must go," he decides. "Where to?" I ask. "Anyplace you haven't seen," he says, and walks down the mountain. 3.Tyuonyi Kees and I are happy when the sun splits the tree for a moment because yesterday controlled this mountain dawn, burning mud deeper into the adobe. Cottonwoods catch fire here, give the people time to hide inside turtle shells, though they come out to watch us. I stop as the drawings come to life under the arches, symbols familiar to those who sleep by crossing the street each night. As I stare, I realize a man who diappears wants to understand and not hide, yet the designs tempt me to walk in the wrong direction and leave him behind. To go farther up would mean a canyon where I have been. A dirt street inside another path, tiny houses falling back, letting me pass beyond their locked doors, as if the smoking windows know where I must go. When I enter the placita, the old woman is not there because this is about bringing Kees back. The dirt street opens to the last scorched tree breaking out of walls to shade what can't be blessed, its branches confusing until their cracks enter the ground in search of peace. 4.Santa Maria Water disappears to settle as clear glass that contains memories of thirst, the ancient hole found in the ruins, Kees' hand keeping the others from skimming the surface of the still water, reaching to be alone under the mountain wall, though eyes that watch have seen this before, men entering and never coming out. One hand keeps the other from touching the surface. Pulling back allows the echo of falling rocks, the deep swimmer breaking through walls to emerge on the other side of the well where the first figures to emerge in centuries are sitting and rubbing sand over their wet, shivering bodies. 5.Fort Selden Kees is getting tired in the desert heat and sits on a historic slab of western settlement, this old fort a museum where thirsty men come to drink from the bitter well. Kees smokes too many cigarettes and shakes his head at me, "Look at the moth and the deep iris in your garden because the equation I found in San Francisco is an eclipse drawn on paper by my trembling hands." He pauses and takes a drag, my head bathed in sweat and confusion as he coughs this, "It is too late because jazz has gone away. I placed a stone deity of a bird next to an eggplant on my desk, its smooth purple skin as significant as the gathering of birds in your head, their chirping coming from sorrow, even from the bay where I never told a lie, though the grand steps lead to the burned church where the musicians used to trace my forehead." I stare at him and he tosses smoke on the ground because we are close to home. 6.El Paso Kees waits at the bus station in my hometown. We cannot go farther because the border here is out there and as violent as the reasons he disappeared in San Francisco a long time ago. I want to tell him who I think he is, but I grew up here and must hide how things have really been, drawing the light off the mountains as if the doubters of history are simply starving boys offering to shine Kees' shoes on the corner of Paisano Street. My hometown has a bridge, but Kees won't go near it because he says to cross it would be to admit there is something wrong on the other side of my family's house. He can never cross because we have found our way here, El Paso dreaming its population of mute men must keep growing because the border keeps taking too many of them away. Kees looks at the bus schedule, runs out of cigarettes and everything is closed. He nods at nothing and waits on the bench with someone he swears looks like me.

I called the white donkey that hurt my left shoulder the last time it appeared, ramming me with its ivory head, cracking my back to relieve me of worry and hope. I called the white donkey, surprised at the sound of my voice. Scared, I wondered if the white head would give me its donkey brain, snowy matter dripping into my ears like the horse of the first man who fell off, the donkey teaching me about desire and the moan, that white hair on the back of my head that warns me. I called the donkey. It came slowly toward me, huge ears shaking with fury, its breath turning the air white as it bit into the white apple of my throat. I faced the donkey, watched its gait become a shuffle of possession, shaking its head as it stopped to root its dirty hoofs in the ground. I stepped back and clicked my fingers, but it would not come closer, its snort commanding I listen as it farted. I walked away and did not know it was I who yearned for labor of the ass because the animal I summoned couldn’t remove the white scar from my heart, a blind life I lived for good.