From the Desire Field

I don’t call it sleep anymore.

I’ll risk losing something new instead—

like you lost your rosen moon, shook it loose.

But sometimes when I get my horns in a thing—

a wonder, a grief or a line of her—it is a sticky and ruined

fruit to unfasten from,

despite my trembling.

Let me call my anxiety, desire, then.

Let me call it, a garden.

Maybe this is what Lorca meant

when he said, verde que te quiero verde—

because when the shade of night comes,

I am a field of it, of any worry ready to flower in my chest.

My mind in the dark is una bestia, unfocused,

hot. And if not yoked to exhaustion

beneath the hip and plow of my lover,

then I am another night wandering the desire field—

bewildered in its low green glow,

belling the meadow between midnight and morning.

Insomnia is like Spring that way—surprising

and many petaled,

the kick and leap of gold grasshoppers at my brow.

I am struck in the witched hours of want—

I want her green life. Her inside me

in a green hour I can’t stop.

Green vein in her throat green wing in my mouth

green thorn in my eye. I want her like a river goes, bending.

Green moving green, moving.

Fast as that, this is how it happens—

soy una sonámbula.

And even though you said today you felt better,

and it is so late in this poem, is it okay to be clear,

to say, I don’t feel good,

to ask you to tell me a story

about the sweet grass you planted—and tell it again

or again—

until I can smell its sweet smoke,

leave this thrashed field, and be smooth.