Puebla

The monumental blue vase casts an indigo shadow.

I like these sweaty afternoon siestas best,
your bare breast, full blue
transparency as new
as your new sundress reflected
in the three blinking eyes of the traffic light.

The ornamental blue vase casts an indignant shadow.

Your breath, my favorite
pollutant heavy with wine
borne in from the coast
like a blood-red fog that dampens
all the peeling slanted walls trimmed in tile mosaic.

Your brown-paper fragrance is a cut-out in my bed.

Your endless leg propped on the sash trickles a stream
of mercury sweat up your thigh
to catch the temperature of sunlight
holding it aloft as an example of nothing that
means anything at all to anyone but me or my memory.

Your brown-paper fragrance is a cork in my bed.

I see only indigo, a tint of ambergris, bent knees
stained copper-green, and a neon elbow blinking
outside this two-dollar hotel window,
red and white semaphores, your throat and teeth,
and you, my innocent heretofore, repeating an old joke

El Sabor, El Sabor, El Sabor ….

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