Grandma’s Resting Place

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Parched, her crooked fire ant fingers

pinch my pupil’s membrane

breaking the water from its shell.

Sip my cool brown, Abuela.

Thread my lashes to my brows

stretch my lids one inch wider.

Flat, taut, dissected eye.

Want to see her resting.

Arms spread, legs sprawled

body twisted over purple baby budding azaleas.

The green of her irises peeled, shaved flesh

floating, fighting their way into the black of my curl.

See me.

Trying to wring her from my hair

seizuring hands milking over and under and through.

Now, I can leak your scent.

It is damp, like the wood cuatros are carved from.

A fragrance as sharp as a slice of piqued bamboo.

Can I have a piece of you?

Take your chopped swelled burgundy tongue,

fold it into the longest crease of my palm?

The weight of it will

instruct me to clench those buds

in my white-knuckled grasp

as if somebody just called my mother a spic liar.

I will punch through the earth’s body

bed you sleep on, tunnel that tongue

deep, deep in this dirt.

Baste it with sliced ribbons from the light heel of my foot.

Water it with the loving froth from my mouth.

Watch you grow.