by Alejandro Villa Vasquez
I am in that stellar world again
surrounded by archangels, by sugar rivers.
My mother pink with pregnancy.
Where the world — oh, hug me — is
a tamarind as it never was.
Never not since my father was
Ha-mes, not Jaymez;
not since my mother’s manicure, little red mirrors
reflecting the American sun in the South.
Rose and robin’s egg melt like corn flour.
This ground sings.
Only the small strike of an accent
could speak our language as it was.
I spread to hug the belly of the mountainside.
The vision swift, impossible I admit.
Sleep fails and that world burst
loud as a belt on the leg.
The real, white sun rips me back
a child is being beaten —
I drink the vinegar of truth
like my First Communion,
while azure-pinched eyes watch: