Tercio de Varas

Spring has delivered her shipment of rain,
& so we are preparing to kill each other.
Like all good things, it takes practice. Years
spent wandering the corridors of her querencia,
searching her hips for the softest cut of earth,
humming Celia Cruz into the hem of her stucco-
clad skin. I spent years loving her
before we learned to hurt each other,
in our house filled with beautiful, chipped, ordinary
things. During the summer we’d turn our bed
into a kiln of clay-fired limbs; the kitchen
decorated with our ceramic laughter fading
to dust. All I am is an animal wagoned with want,
& she is a ticker tape parade, marching Mexico
City to our Plaza de Toros, the place where dreams
go to slaughter, chanting come, come and watch
how we make victors of each other.

Tercio de Banderillas

In the ring across from me, my Cintrón stands
gold dipped, light draped, talavera tiled,
her eyes a cenote I sink straight through
until there I am, in the barrel of her body.
At point blank range, what stills us is the safety
of memory. Above my head is a limestone
starred sky, sure heaven, shaped in
the hollow of her lung cavity. Where she hides
the film strips from our first date. A carnival
where we conquered the drop tower,
that day when I fell & fell & forgot
to be afraid. Mayor of mischief, she stole
a fish from the plastic pool, a slice of sky
stuck in a ziplock bag. That was how
she loved me. With less oxygen than
enough. Back then, my heart was a fistful
of sea & she carried me—she carried me.


Tercio de Muerte

At the end of the aisle waits my milonguera,
veil of miracles swinging from her hair,
red carnations scorching at the desert
of her feet. Above us wave the mesquite trees
who stood witness to our growing up. Every afternoon
in that tiny living room, light would drip through
the open windows, past all the furniture we found
on the side of the road, and I was sure without
measure that this was the most blessed of times.
The future I fought for, those nights dark as well
water, when each hour was another poured.
I vowed to find her: the woman whose hands
could make even the agave leaves soften.
Even me, with my pulque lungs. As she reaches
for me, clarity rises from the riverbank of our
embrace. I have loved her with the length
of my life, & she has earned her kill.