Eva comes home from work to where there are many flies
and slaps my brother side-headed because he left the back
door open,  she is bovine heavy and limps to close it.  We eat

Chef Boyardee Spaghetti and it is soothing like peanut butter
fudge or Pepsi-Cola.  Eva says do the dishes up boys,  goes
to bed and cries.  Me and brother go to sleep and I dream

of a burning house.

I have an autumn soul
For I am a child of the fall
And in the dying chill
You'll see the beauty of it all
My light is warm and soothing
But there is a frigid side
For lurking in the shadows
A wintry pain resides
So knit it all together
And bundle your heart tight
Beneath the hooded sweaters
Lies the darkness and the light.

I had a dream of you
But somehow it was mixed with reality
You hated me because you loved me still
And yet you found someone to replace me

I was envious of her, jealous that you chose her
Even though I had someone else too
She was the woman, married to Hector
Whose sister you slept with when I loved you

We exchanged our daughter in a parking lot
You made no effort to hide her
Foreign emotions overwhelmed me
Settled resentment returned

Her name I always remember from high school
She is Blanca, still technically Mrs. Blanca Garcia
Somehow you both resemble the devil
To remind me of your affair with Hector's sister, Ophelia

¡Diablo vete!
You're a past memory, long forgotten
You come in the night, inconspicuously
Finding any light left to darken.

We sit three stools away and can not talk
bold enough to understand
one another.

She moves to the seat next to me and asks
if my bacon is crisp.  I say more
or less—want a bite?

There is a tattoo of a cross on her forehead.
My cousin Beryl done that to me when
I was 12, horsin’ around, he was 19
and no good.

She goes to *** or powder her tattoo; I pay
my bill and walk outside under a sky
so blue I want to cry.