Cerberus

Everyone carries a room about
inside them. This fact can
be proved by means of the
sense of hearing. If someone
walks fast and one pricks up
one's ears and listens, say
at night, when everything
roundabout is quiet, one hears,
for instance, the rattling
of a mirror not quite firmly
fastened to the wall.
- Franz Kafka

Another Saturday
blooms itself into libation.
I find my own vertigo to
flare into periscopes quickly
upon gazing out the window.

Siren-light looked astray,
breaks apart into Quixote's
tilt-a-whirls upon the wall
past your countenance. The rattling
of typewriters from the next room

follows a strictly prescribed pattern,
except for several words. "Mister" or
"Missus," depending upon the recipient,
"son," "father," or "husband" depending
on the subject. Meanwhile, a grave

silence has shown its face, yours
hides scowling behind a cable bill.
Your carpet quickly becomes
a vast desert, although only I and
your dog seem to recognize it. "Cerberus,

Cerberus," I call. He dips his head into his bowl. Hades,
you show your face in subtle ways. I scratch him behind the ears.

Mierda en sus ojos, mierda en sus dientes

Your fingers were as hacksaws, I said,
one zigzagged grin - again a refugee. To a standstill now.
The floorboards, now covered in sawdust-
pounced on by your daughter, eyelids tight,
a day's effort again failed
to turn them back into mahogany.
"My grandfather, the great carpenter," I offer,
"would the trees have been as soldiers,
a barren earth would greet us at dawn.
Were the sky to be as merciful,
a thousand rains of streetcleaners
again on this ensieged city. It retracts
endlessly back into the earth."

Sometimes at night, your daughter
sobs in her sleep, waking to
a pillow of ferns. Sometimes
you watch her circling the room,
from the corner your hand braids her hair into Parthenons.

"Mierda en sus ojos, mierda en sus dientes."

Marina, I saw you yesterday at the bus stop,
whispering lost languages into your phone. March
is our last effort to cut the ice from the leaves.
March is our last sacrifice to a god who tells us
we're a month too early for goodwill.

you sat five rows ahead. Off
into the hills, again we are carried.
Orchids tear past the windshield in streams, a
cinema subtitled for the
bewildered among us. These theatres
were constructed mid-landslide, a
bee with its forewing caught
between seats swings itself
over and over, to curl itself
beyond the Minoan, centuries ago, now
into a bloodied pulp.
You sigh and run your fingers
through your daughter's hair,
to a standstill now.