Valerie Martínez

Seaside, and the fragment of one running— calves, ribs, green eyes into water. There he goes. Waves. Buoying up as into sky. And the seagulls fly, seeing it as relief, a story. Once they were there, two on a white blanket. The circumference of a shadow. Sunlight around that shadow. The relation of two: bathers, robed figures configured as one. And she touches him—tender—and it is done. (I've gone back to it. I've, I've— it's not where I am. I give it away again.) You're there. It's still in the sand. It's trying to chisel it in. How it comes forth: the story. Wanting it, carving it down to vision. Architecture, a coliseum of bent light, the beautiful scatter of broken stones. (And I can turn it into stones.) Love, love: a portico, a labyrinth. And his simple aquatics, legs and arms in the brackish, etched against white fish. The song, under there, of how he'll leave, and naturally, like all living things: animals, summer, daylight for the eves. And the buildings, all shadows and beings: block, angels, curves. With the love, memory of all loves. The pediments, these reliquaries. It's our landscape, artifact—it might hurt. (Run to, run away from it.)

Larry Levan (snake), 2006, by Elia Alba Hip hip hip hip hip makes the man as the conga, serpentine, slides across the frame and the disco dub — tilt and sway — sewing pelves in the room, as if  Larry, still, were levitating streetwise Blacks, Drags, Latinos, Punks: Saturday Mass, 1985, in the Paradise Garage — Evelyn “Champagne” King, Kraftwerk, Ashra. No. He’s black-and-white, a head shot, one two three four five, on this S curve of 21st-century revelers, mask on the one body down, shimmer slant of a hoop earring under the ten-leg- hop-and-pulsate — glide on through. And Larry, Dour Father, bubble pop-popped, afloat, asking repeatedly:Who, My Friends,is fronting? Who is not? You, Velvet Valance, over the sequineddrag of curtain. Black is Black, Brown is Brown, Gay is Gay discopulsing up and through seventeen years of not-forbidding bodies. Introibo ad altare Dei. Ad Deum qui lætificat juventutem meam.Gather youto me and to one another. Grind.

We have the body of a woman, an arch over the ground, but there is no danger. Her hair falls, spine bowed, but no one is with her. The desert, yes, with its cacti, bursage, sidewinders. She is not in danger. If we notice, there are the tracks of animals moving east toward the sunrise. And the light is about to touch a woman's body without possession. Here, there are no girl's bones in the earth, marked with violence. A cholla blooms, just two feet away. It blooms. There is a man, like her father, who wakes to a note saying I have gone, for a day, to the desert

Granite Weaving, 1988, by Jesús Moroles To climb, in this instance, upon a horizon Shadow-shadow. Lip-to-lip rock. Ziggurat. Ah, from the base to the top. Sideways. Upwards. Again, in succession. Sprung and sprung Frozen idiom. Barre. Pietrasanta. Mouth and mouth. Sung. Granite. Stitching The way fabric gathers — pinch, scrunch. Not in dreams alone. Not the knot. Step, step, step, step, step. 35 up. As if into clouds Ur, Aqar Quf, Chogha Zanbil, Tikal. Kin. Plank upon plank upon plank upon Little Blocks:ahem. don’t you forget us. a, of, or, but, if, la, and Close and closer to flattened. Rock, Water, Bone: Noisy Pilgrim.

Turn it over and look up into the sphere of heaven. The tracery is lucent, light seeping through to write, white-ink your face, upturned. Swing it below and it's a cradle of blue water, the sea, a womb. A mixing bowl for Babylonian gods. Here, they whirl up the cosmos. Pick it up and your hands form a pedestal, and all who drink contain the arcs of body and the universe— and between them, no imaginable tear or distance.

I Arch inverted: white peony and stamens, yellow. Center of the body. Imagines. Who is absent. Fingers in my mouth—memory. Dragonfly so blue in the head. Orange, as fire, in the body. Wings, transparence. Disappearing arms. The space where he was. Aureole. The space he is, she was. And the opposite. Defines the dragon which flies. Iridescent where it was. Echo of hued wings. II Heat at the center. Heat where she was. Lack of passion where the torso won't go. No path through what is occupied. Space. III Falls in a delicate arch, sees own soul. Cadaver as shrine, concavity. So white. Says white flesh and no spirit. And touching the dead. And touching what is not. IV In our calculations: the fact of matter at lack of matter. The invisible, collapsed star. If you must,a black hole. Thus the message of blackness clearly indicating the coordinates of nothingness. V Remembers the pilgrimage to the illumined wall. And Christ's face was said to appear. God's face. Who sees it? Child trying, trying. Says to the child (and it is the juncture) go toward faith, go through absence, way to belief. VI (Not believing. Not seeing and not believing. All the chants to atmosphere, blanks.) VII Implodes, and all the way to nothing. To illumine, first, then fades to black. Hole where light was. Absent star, perforation in there. And memory of light, halo on. Angels who walk among. Seeming darkness around the head. VIII Falling languid. Lover not there. IX My sweet—the miles,the night. Darling my fingernails bear their half- moons half-gone how long? The house.Really my love. The rooms are emptied.Haunted. Ghost of you come here body. X And I can see her, worshipper, with a blue robe, biting her nails— thinks it's true,it's true, someone witnessed the miracles, someone saw it all. XI And the mouths. Reeling the bass in. Hooking the parabola of mouth, air. Violence of fish body in the air. Absence of water, presence of... Open my mouth. His fingers going in. The gills going open open nothing nothing. Dragonfly so blue in the head. On red wings, disappeared. Sing sing going going. XII Of all the tendernesses at the end there was that bouquet of wild orchids the constant ritual the washing the turning of the body so cleansed by a lover's hands until the struggle for breath the gasp and the body getting less warm the ceremony and like the Egyptians all preparation then the emerging presence the advent of absence the adornments artifacts in the tombs where the lungs tighten in our awe it's all there but spirit saying goodbye are you gone it's difficult to tell you must be