I. To the Santerían Woman on the Dock Across from Mine

a. The Goat

The first time I saw a goat up close

was when you draped its headless body atop the current.

Its hooves grazed the buoy of my crab trap

before catching on the line.

Ankle deep in blood-steeped brackish,

you looked at me and your offering:

a Lazarus close enough to touch,

a bloated belly tickled by flies,

a long intestine fishing line.

The animal, with fur bloodied stiff,

left resurrected by the run of river-water.

I knelt, white-knuckled-watching, at the edge of the dock

as it sailed beyond the overpass.

b. The Hen

When I saw you next, and yes I waited,

the hen in your basket was still clucking.

Do you think she knew she sang her own lament?

Though I had not in years,

I allowed her spirit-song to guide my fingers-

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

You let her blood run over the mound of stones at your feet,

as again you watched me busy my hands with the traps,

hold back cries of mourning,

hold back my flesh from diving in the metallic water

and breathing the hen back to life.

Instead I swallowed it down with the bile.

c. The Fruit

You came baring the crown of a halved pomegranate.

If I had known better, I would have bowed my head

like the gull to the minnows between us.

Instead I braced my body- pajamaed and breakfast-less,

for what you’d feed the river.

And yet, you stepped beyond the stones.

You washed your feet in Earth’s running veins,

and wept tenderly into the basket of fruit.

I pondered the half-lives of your prior acts

while my trap’s rope, heavy at the slack,

led me through the body that divided us.

You scrubbed the blackened blood from my palms

with the salt from your skin.

You sank a gardenia into my braid,

and laid my untethered body atop the current.

Forgive me, I said in the Earth’s tongue,

as I floated north in the excess of your mercy.