FROM The Other Man Was Me

(ARTE PÚBLICO PRESS, 1994)

El Curandero

I am bathing. All my grayness —
The hospital, the incurable illnesses,
This headache — is slowly given over
To bathwater, deepening it to where

I lose sight of my limbs. The fragrance,
Twenty different herbs at first (dill, spices
From the Caribbean, aloe vera),
Settles, and becomes the single, warm air

Of my sweat, of the warmth deep in my hair —
I recognize it, it's the smell of my pillow
And of my sheets, the closest things to me.
Now one with the bathroom, every oily tile

A different picture of me, every square
One in which I'm given the power of curves,
Distorted, captured in some less shallow
Dimension — now I can pray. I can cry, and he'll

Come. He is my shoulder, maybe, above
The gray water. He is in the steam,
So he can touch my face. Rafael,
He says, I am your saint. So I paint

For him the story of the day: the wife
Whose husband beat purples into her skin,
The jaundiced man (who calls me Ralph, still,
Because that's more American), faint

Yellows, his eyes especially — then,
Still crying, the bright red a collision
Brought out of its perfect vessel, this girl,
This life attached to, working, the wrong thing

Of a tricycle. I saw pain —
Primitive, I could see it, through her split
Chest, in her crushed ribs — white-hot. Now,
I can stop. He has listened, he is silent.

When he finally speaks, touching my face,
It sounds herbal, or African, like drums
Or the pure, tiny bells her child's cries
Must have been made of. Then, somehow,
I'm carried to my bed, the pillow, the sheets
Fragrant, infinite, cool, and I recognize
His voice. In the end, just as sleep takes
The world away, I know it is my own.


from Song for My Lover

XI. A MEDICAL STUDENT LEARNS LOVE AND DEATH

The scalpel finds the heart. The heart is still.
The way it rests, suspended in his chest,
It seems a fruit unharvested, its flesh
Inedible but oddly tempting — swelled
A size I never will forget. My sleeves
Rolled up, I touch, I trace an artery —
A torturous, blockaded road — and free
The muscle from connective tissue sheaths
An unforgotten lover left in place.
My working hands become the fluttering
He must have felt; the lost anatomy
Of his emotions, gardens left in haste.
Past human bodies, no one has evolved.
With these deflated lungs, he's penitent,
He wants to say how love will never end.
I cut, and make from him the grave I rob.

XIII. TOWARD CURING AIDS

I slap on latex gloves before I put
My hands inside the wound. A hypocrite
Across the room complains that it's her right
To walk away — to walk away's her right
As a physician. Lapidary, fine,
My patient's eyes are overhearing her.
He doesn't wince. His corner bed inters
Him even now, as she does: he hasn't died,
But he will. The right to treatment medicine
Denied is all the hollows here: along
His arms, the hungry grooves between the bones
Of ribs. As if her surgeon's thread through skin —
The rite of obligation overdue —
Could save him now. I close the wound. The drain
Is repositioned. Needles in his veins,
I leave him pleading. There's too much to do.


Aida

I've never met the guy next door. I know
He's in there — mud-caked shoes outside to dry,
The early evening opera, the glow
(Of candlelight?) his window trades for night —

I think he's ill, since once the pharmacy
Delivered his prescriptions to my door:
Acyclovir, Dilantin, AZT.
He doesn't go out running anymore.

I've heard that he's a stockbroker who cheats
A little on his taxes. Not in love,
They say — he seems to live alone. I eat
My dinner hovering above my stove,

And wondering. Why haven't we at least
Exchanged a terse hello, or shaken hands?
What reasons for the candlelight? His feet,
I'm guessing by his shoes, are small; I can't

Imagine more. I'd like to meet him, once —
Outside, without apartments, questions, shoes.
I'd say that I'm in love with loneliness.
I'd sing like candlelight, I'd sing the blues

Until we'd finished all the strawberries.
We've never met, and yet I'm sure his eyes
Are generous, alive, like poetry
But melting, brimming with the tears he cries

For all of us: Aida, me, himself,
All lovers who may never meet. My wall —
As infinite and kind-faced as the wealth
Of sharing candlelight — it falls, it falls.


The Test

Singing to himself, waiting for the voice
To call him next, he...