Thursday, April 1, 2010

Green Mango Kinda Love


your smile
hesitant like
the sunrise
reluctant like skies
forced to break
to the coming light.
a healing bruise
spread magnificently
over the horizon.

I do not call you by name
instead I seek the familiar ache
the slight twinge of muscles
the sore thought of your face

this is our language

it is tongues
who speak
like arriving
earthquakes.
everything is breaking
but you are always
so fucken beautiful
beneath all this light

you

swinging on a mango tree
skin like burnt sugar canes
hands of marañón
jocote seeds for eyes
singing your song
of volcanoes and oceans
of men who sprouted machetes for limbs
of mothers whose spines coil
like wisps of steam
rising from
pots of boiling beans

you smell like
breath inhaled too deep
like tears soaked into
flor de izote petals

what if I told you
I’ve loved you from the womb,
spoke you as my first word,
remembered you
before we even met?

sonrie my mother said

smile because this will be sent back home
stand up straight
so they can see
how proud you are
live
harder
that anyone else
because there is a place
in our memory
that demands that we do

it is dirt roads
and cows
with lovers eyes
it is banana tree leaves,
gently wrapped tamales,
pupusa vendors,
women with no teeth
and stained aprons
who laugh
as if
beauty
was something
the years give you.

it is boys with shoes
so polished you see
the clouds in them,
unbuttoned shirts
because sun
has a way of
peeling off clothes,
rickety pick up trucks,
baskets carried on heads,
naked babies
sucking on
the greenest
mangoes
you have ever seen.

this is how
how I love you
hypnotized
by the swing
of the hammocks
in your breeze,
adobe wall houses,
red clay tiles,
tin roofs
and brown faces
so beautiful
I stop looking
For the moon
And start searching
For another smile.

It is being so poor
an egg is a luxury
but a stranger at your door
means a banquet
means your last bits of coffee
means your best chair
and coolest corner of your corridor

it is my fathers weather beaten face
staring from the windows of every bus
it is his laughter being peeled
from the branches of the highest
mango trees

es todo lo que se
lo soy
lo fui

my fingertips
the lump in my throat
a silence only god knows

and I love you

this heartbeat

El Salvador

a bruise I hope never heals.

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