Tomato Pickers

(some lines taken from Bishop, Lowell, and Ai)

The rooster jumps up on the windowsill
and spreads his red-gold wings.
The pickers rise, their sweat dawns before
sunrise breaks the night apart.
Black flies ascend from the dirt as dew evaporates,
a buzzing fog of itch
that makes the hours creep.
The day thickens, by noon
it's viscous like the pulpy insides
of ripe tomatoes.
Skilled hands, blistered by the harvest,
vanquish rows and rows and rows.

The red bird watches from the shade.
Eyes like pentacostal flames, he's pacing
indelible grooves in their backs,
keeping them bent to the cruel sun.
Stooped and straining until the bright fruit hangs
lurid in the sunset hour.
Until the rooster lets them know they're done,
mounting the sky with natural command -
you'd think him venerable.
They're sent home with creaking bodies
and a little less cash than they need.

Swimming

1
Merciless white-hot light enveloped
my brown red skin,
baked the cement deck below.
Perched high in the lifegaurd chair,
the water taunted my parched lips,
promising refuge from the daunting heat.
I cast an endless summer stair
out across the steamy scene.

Young boys,
brazen in their serious play
splashed fiercely,
at the shy young girl
wading waist deep, her red mouth open.
She waited; secretly she wanted
to play, to fight, to feel the slip of sunblock
between her hot skin and his. She watched.
Occasionally shrieking with delight
when cold spray wet her thin bare arms
and tingling cool slid down and down.

Laughter and pressing chit chat from red ladies.
Red lips, red skin, red discussion
carried on under umbrellas by the bar.
Sipping a red cranberry cocktail
oblivious to the red blood surging
beneath her daughter's bathing suit.

2
The mid day heat froze at the sound of my whistle.
The piercing shrill silenced the splash,
mummed the red ladies' red lips,
and directed their eyes at my flying body
hurling down.

I see nothing but a smudge of dark,
heavy in the pace of chlorine waves.
My pulse a drum
beating in my ears as I
swam down and down.
The bare cement bowl,
drain in the center,
no bubbles bother to be this deep.

3
Her body is limp,
her mouth open and blue.
Brown hair swirls about her face
as I pull her tiny body up
through the chill quiet of this blue world.

Breaking the surface
red bodies and eyes gather around the lonely two.
Her weight is greater in this world.
Wet cement scrapes brown skin,
her neck craned back,
knobby legs laid at odd angles.
Brown hair, a wet pelt around her tiny skull.
The ground dents my knees, I hover over her tiny body
and pretend Lazarus whas my doing.

Water escapes her lungs,
precious breath flows,
startles her eyes wide.
The red ladies cry.
Her chest heaves in and out,
ribs showing through her suit.
Young boys shuffle their bare feet.

Semi Romantic Beach

Tongues sweet with crude rum, blood pumping
with the reggae pulse of Caribbean clubs,
we stumble to the beach
to find ourselves in silence.
The conch and snail persist
in their sleepy pace
Sea star sucks at the bottom
Grape leaves shelter the pregnant hawkbills
that heave sand to hide their eggs.
Stray cats prowl empty streets
disturb the tired vagrants
and fuck incessantly.

His rough hands scuff my back
and press me tight
to his erection, urgent
rubbing at the skin
of my stomach, it reminds me
I'm hungry. I squirm and think of worms,
thrusting their long bodies
through soft earth.

His dark skin reeks of want.
Sweat from his temples smears on my face.
I taste the salt on my cheek,
feel my thighs spread and he pushes in.

The full moon glides in and out of waves,
the light is blinding.
I shut my eyes.
Try not to think of food.

My hips sharp
our bodies flex and breathe
rough in the sand.
A hawksbill moans with the last dripping egg dropped.
The vagrant comes in his hand,
I hear his heavy exhale fall.

A Love Poem

I caught this crazy bug by the bulb
of my porch light
late one summer night.
Oh, it was gross, compound eyes
bulging black, the size
of dinner plates round.
Back hunched in a bug shrug,
razor legs long and thorned
with ball and hitch joints.
The skin, bone and horned,
a green eggshell encasing
the viscous bisque of pulp and sac insides-
Its body built a tank.
Antennae with feathery laced ends
glided over armored thorax.
Oh, it was beautiful.

I offered my hand
and its pricked toes dug into my palm.
I winced, but unafraid of blod
I closed my eyes,
cupped my hands at my chin
and let its feelers caress my nose.

And she coaxed me into her world.

She showed me the secrets that hid under dead grass.
Together we crawled over powdery mushroom bulbs
birthed through earthen mass,
their fibrous tentacles sucking nourishment
from everything the forest discarded.
She taught me which grey head to feast upon
and which would kill.
We tucked our bodies deep
in the grooves of flaking bark,
and leavened sill,
blending into trees rough grey skin
when birds flew overhead.

We walked together though seasons
of sleep moss and maggots
lurking under rotten logs.
My pink fleshy shell and her green bone skin-
she was careful not to poke me with her tines.

When we laughed we laughed hard
and her armor loosened with every joke.

Until one night,
when we lounged in the folds of white iris,
laughing at the face of the moon.
With a mighty guffa, her armor broke loose.
Gasping, I saw
her flesh showed pink
and soft-breathing like mine.
Her hair rolled from bug helmet,
black silken threads spilling in droves.
Thorns flaked away;
legs came from lifeless stilt
in a pile of exoskeleton.
She stood: a new flesh form,
naked in the silver light
and we laughed some more.