It was exactly the moment in which I awoke
and saw you, then, concealed by a dream:
none could behold you; nobody saw you
but I.  I felt the wicked shame which came
as sleep's veil fell, slipped yonder, was gone;
and your face only confronted mine,
seizing the heart from mind's eye, reminding the conscience,
forcing the inadmissible.  It was exactly that moment--
the moment in which I saw the veil removed,
and was helpless to stop or reverse that unveiling--
that I became awash with a long-suffering guilt,
because I knew then that I loved you.

Human Love,
When you come to eat the rations of my heart,
remember, then, that starving is an art;
that to consume would be to ****--a crime;
that to exhume this cherry seed of mine
will drain me of a blood as thin as grape juice;
that in time, I will mourn my stolen-***** fruit.
-Ocean

            ------

Ocean,
You speak unto your seedling self, child.
You are weak--we are weak.  No mild
measure of halfway self-control can live
in mental habitat which exists to give
and only to give.  Your fluids will seep
and you'll be unable even to weep.
-Earth
            ---
Obtuse Earth,
Stop your assaulting me with these words.
Stop your quiet screaming, this dirge
which comes under guise of gentility--
insufferably loud, however creatively.
I never addressed you, ugly whisperer.
I never addressed you, nuissance, stranger.
-Ocean
            ---
Stubborn Ocean,
Do not be foolish!  Listen, girl.
Spurn him now with resolve; lest how
can dignity you preserve in any small
amount?  He doesn't love you at all.
And knowing that, you gave me address:
indeed, you have addressed yourself.
-Earth

            ------

Love,
Were that I could say it's so,
I would not give this room to grow.
But oh, if I do hold it back
then infinitely I should retract
into myself.  So speak or speak not,
but if so, speak now, for I am distraught.
-Ocean

Seven of eight pups writhe against each other
in a great cardboard box cut to enclose them
with pink blanket and wet towel and maternal warmth,
curled up against one another, noses searching their blind world to nurse.
One is dying.  It is the one my mother holds
against her stomach--the one who suckles her fingertip, which she's dipped in water--
the one who moans again, again, again, more raucous than any of them,
though it can no longer even lift its head.
It is this one whom little Jaedon has been watching
for hours with tears in his eyes, speaking earnestly from
his seven-year-old heart for this thing that has lived not even two weeks,
"I would do anything, anything, anything..."
again, again, again.  In him still is such hope
it may live, but his cries are an awful din to me.
I cannot cry with him.  I cannot even touch
the little animal anymore.

He materializes in white, as though from cloud
out of petals and vines--bright ferns whose arms
flower and wrap as though silken angel's yarn
breathing a sheer and layered freckle-shroud

about the capacious canvas of his back
in an uncharacteristic ceremony of purity or bliss.
So capricious a beloved yet elicits a dual image
in the mind of her who's also seen him black.

There is no catharsis to ease
the knowledge that someone
has been purged from the Earth.
There is no consolation,
no prayer to speak or be heard,
and words only to express
the hopelessness of such a want,
but no words for the want itself.

There are questions to be asked,
but I cannot seem to form them.

My mother enters the kitchen, says that her hands
are dripping, begs my father to finish his work
at the sink.  I observe, for a moment, the expression
upon her face which seems conflicted between
a desire to laugh and a need
                                               to feel clean.
I interject that clearly her fate is to have
dog placenta on her hands for all eternity.
Her disgust and amusement seem equally to rise.
After she has washed herself, she speaks of
Ponyo's last intermission between long
intervals of birthing to nap three fleeting minutes;
another contraction gave way to a wriggling
new mole who squeaked and groaned with
bizarre endearment, seizing my heart and causing
its mother's head, after jolting awake,
                                                          ­     to go limp.
Mom says it's sad-but-sweet.  Dear dog
has spent herself six times already in increments
which, as they increase, draw her spirit still closer
to a totally inevitable chasm of fled energy;
as soon as she falls asleep, yet a new indignant mass
of living parts swaddled in loose skin and wet fur
shoves its way outward, forward, world-ward.
Ponyo is not selfish.  Immediately after birth seven,
she begins to lick her offspring clean and nudge it
towards her belly, where it may feed itself.
"Only just got a break, and already she's
                                                           ­         back to work."
I'm one of five children my mother has carried
and raised--and for a human, five are many!
I'm afraid to give birth even once, despite
that a greater want of mine is to hold
my own child someday.  I wonder if that
is motherhood: discomfort and indecision
concerning the worth of the effort in labor,
in birth, in the weak moments thereafter--
stroking one's child's downy, collapsible head
and feeling a need to protect her, to nurture her,
that is more pressing even than the so-
alluring whispers which Sleep may breathe--
and even beyond these moments, when I have said
to my mother that I hate her (because
to me, it was obvious that I did not,
and was too callous, obtuse, and insensitive
to think that she might just believe it)
and then missed church the next day to stay
with her when she felt ill and tired--if this
is motherhood, I wonder.  It must be more even
than I could ever have thought like wanting
to laugh and to wring one's hands
(and even just to go to sleep)
                                                all at once.

Today I wrote my
first poem in Spanish--this
is not it, of course.