Not what you thought: just a turn-off
leading downhill not up


narrow, doesn't waste itself
has a house at the far end


scrub oak and cactus in the yard
some cats some snakes


in the house there is a room
in the room there is a bed


on the bed there is a blanket
that tells the coining of the railroad


under the blanket there are sheets
scrubbed transparent here and there


under the sheet there's a mattress
the old rough kind, with buttons and ticking


under the mattress is a frame
of rusting iron still strong


the whole bed smells of soap and rust
the window smells of old tobacco-dust and rain


this is your room
in Calle Visión


if you took the turn-off
it was for you

Calle Visión sand in your teeth
granules of cartilage in your wrists


Calle Visión firestorm behind
shuttered eyelids fire in your foot


Calle Visión rocking the gates
of your locked bones


Calle Visión dreamnet dropped
over your porous sleep

Lodged in the difficult hotel
all help withheld


a place not to live but to die in
not an inn but a hospital


a friend's love came to me
touched and took me away


in a car love
of a curmudgeon, a short-fuse


and as he drove eyes on the road
I felt his love


and that was simply the case the way things were
unstated and apparent


and like the rest of it
clear as a dream

Calle Visión your heart beats on unbroken
how is this possible


Calle Visión wounded knee
wounded spine wounded eye


Have you ever worked around metal?
Are there particles under your skin?


Calle Visión but your heart is still whole
how is this possible


since what can be will be taken
when not offered in trust and faith


by the collectors of collectibles
the professors of what-has-been-suffered


The world is falling down hold my hand
It's a lonely sound hold my hand


Calle Visión never forget
the body's pain


never divide it

Ammonia
carbon dioxide
carbon monoxide
methane
hydrogen sulfide
: the gasses that rise from urine and feces


in the pig confinement units known as nurseries
can eat a metal doorknob off in half a year


pig-dander
dust from dry manure
-lung scar: breath-shortedness an early symptom


And the fire shall try
every man's work : Calle Visión:
and every woman's


if you took the turn-off
this is your revelation this the source

The repetitive motions of slaughtering
-fire in wrists in elbows-
the dead birds coming at you along the line
-how you smell them in your sleep-
fire in your wrist blood packed
under your fingernails heavy air
doors padlocked on the outside
-you might steal a chicken-
fire in the chicken factory fire
in the carpal tunnel leaping the frying vats
yellow smoke from soybean oil
and wasted parts and insulating wire
-some fleeing to the freezer some
found "stuck in poses of escape"-

You can call on beauty still and it will leap
from all directions


you can write beauty into the cruel file
of things done things left undone


but once we were dissimilar
yet unseparate that's beauty that's what you catch


in the newborn's midnight gaze
the fog that melts the falling stars


the virus from the rainforest's smashed lianas
searching now for us

In the room in the house
in Calle Visión


all you want is to lie down
alone on your back let your hands


slide lightly over your hipbones
But she's there with her remnants her cross-sections


trying to distract you
with her childhood her recipes her


cargo of charred pages her
carved and freckled neck-stones


her crying-out-for-witness her
backward-forward timescapes


her suitcase in Berlin
and the one lost and found


in her island go-and-come
-is she terrified you will forget her?

In the black net
of her orange wing


the angry nightblown butterfly
hangs on a piece of lilac in the sun


carried overland like her
from a long way off


She has travelled hard and far
and her interrogation goes:


-Hands dripping with wet earth
headfull of shocking dreams


O what have you buried all these years?
What have you dug up?



This place is alive with the dead and with the living
I have never been alone here


I wear my triple eye as I walk along the road
past, present, future all are at my side


Storm-beaten, tough-winged passenger
there is nothing I have buried that can die

On the road there is a house
scrub oak and cactus in the yard


lilac carried overland
from a long way off


in the house there is a bed
on the bed there is a blanket


telling the coming of the railroad
under the mattress there's a frame


of rusting iron still strong
the window smells of old tobacco-dust and rain


the window smells of old
tobacco-dust and rain

1992-1993