spring / de nuevo

bloody moon swells over hill street & it’s red & red & red.

sky wilts like flayed pig skin & it’s red.

air rises thick & sweet & slippery & it’s red like hard candy.

peppermint stripes in cellophane.

a girl lives on cedar lane in the basin of a kettle stained scarlet.

the motorcycles spit & the corn crows cough & the streetlamps

always shake all scratched and yellow. grandma’s rose wallpaper is

peeling & april is a storm.

mosquitoes buzz in pools of honey on granite & cigarette smoke

curls from lakeside sewers. again & again & again the

sky glows red in the night & again the girl watches. listens. interstate

ripping through alleyways & december soup gone cold.

sun like a wailing baby. sun like a bloated cantaloupe, sun like

a quarter crushed under a rainboot, she says. not a metaphor anymore,

not some great big belly of some great big beast. just red.

only red.

she sees another girl in the storefront window in may & the

fat skin on her cheek billows raw. she bites her bruised

gums. purple & purple & purple. bush plane barrels overhead

& the city air stinks of salted braise & chicken broth.

the june fireflies are humming elegies in sticky rain. they tell

her it’s a sin & the girl is a ghost. teetering a line. here and there.

when you say one word over & over & over

again it looses its meaning.

so she shouts, she screams. redredredredredredredredredred.

dull red. bright red. red like candy. red like blood.

red like how they say it’s a sin. red like home.

red like how spring comes again & again & again (de nuevo, mi amor).

red like how everything goes back to where it comes from someday.

perhaps into the belly of some great big beast.