Alstroemeria, Southern-rooted watcher of the skies,
Angel tongues of Peru, with your ******-blushed annunciation
Or Incan-hued sacrificial fire.
So much like the moon tongues of all rivers in first frost or first harvest.  

Like first love, first death is the truest form,  
And blooms in scorn of all its many-mirrored rivers to come.

the lost city of the Incas,
survives and breathes
with this cataclysmic vegetation
still malignant and undying
to conjure divinity
for those lack,
in the purest form,

it awed Neruda and Che
with the shimmer of the first light,
the smell is a poisonous offering,
the view is like an unforgotten love,

most of the nights in my sleep
I come back from there
and some of the nights
I wish I could never.

Lima has my heart
I was loved by these children
Until it hurt me

I don't speak Spanish
Yet they laughed and played with me
They called me their friend

Playground encounter
I thought I'd never see them
But the Lord provides

The hardest goodbye
Was to the mob of children
Kissing me farewell

Why do you love me?
We can't talk, I won't be back
Why are you so pure?

I will miss you all
Each of you has touched my heart
More than you can know

He used to fly around me
    but he should've known
it is the kingdom of my fears
even the birds get lost in here

—for Mariel



She sells 2 sole paltas beside street  
vendors who whistle at crop-top-clad girls,
spewing profanities complete
with broken English. She has four girls
hungry at home. They dream of science, stars,
constellations that spiral and sparr
with particles that make us what we are —

interrupted by howling dogs, the 5
AM tamale man, and stray **** crows.
Amid dust-clouds of Zona D, the sun arrives
over the peak Luis claims once exposed
his innocent eyes to an angel: one
tale of faith raised on culture come undone
presently. Poet Andrea Gibson

writes, “I said to the sun, ‘Tell me about
the Big Bang.’ And the sun said, ‘it hurts to
become.’” At dusk, Mariel takes a Combi out
sixteen stops from Quince, up 302
steps to a turquoise shack and a red rose
garden, and plants avocado seeds at her toes.
Poco a poco, se anda lejos.

El oro, cuando lo golpea, brilla.


I want to stand at 3,082 meters
On the overlook above Machu Picchu — close
Enough to the edge so my timid toes
Flirt with wild columbine and teeter

On white granite stones laid centuries ago.
Speak to me the way the Andes
Breathe cumulus clouds phthalo blue. Seek
Answers in the form of temples. Slow

Down time in the Room with Three Windows —
Hanan-Pacha: bless my fears with conviction.
Kay-Pacha: reject this earth’s mundane affliction.
Ukju-Pacha: watch my seedling-soul as it grows.

Move with me in cyclical certainty from ruin
To reverence, beyond what words can measure —
Even the old Peruvian proverb for treasure.
Our trials make us mountains among humans.

Once there was a man in peru
Who dreamt he ate his shoe
Then woke at night
With such a fright
And found out it was true

I love the low-hanging clouds over the mouth
Of the Amazon, that whisper to its banks stories
Of the low and high seasons, accompanied
By boat thrums and the kiddish squeals of pink dolphins
Playing in pairs near their wakes.

How the humidity carries a tropical air
Which floats through broad-leafed palms
To your senses as the water laughs in loose rolls –
Unfurling like an easy smile and revealing
Twenty-foot banks that disappear with the rain.

I’m not sure what’s more beautiful –
The entirety of it all or the glasslike meridian beads of water
That run away from the boat, warning dragonflies
And beetles that it doesn’t belong,
While from above a hawk screams to bedside reeds

And with a birdsong choir makes music of wind chimes
With the whistling of grasses and leaning trees,
Begging the mud to hold and refuse to succumb to the glean
Of two-legged greed and caustic tourism that turns
The river into a hungry swell.

A song about life and the nature of things --  
Pleading for blind eyes to change what they refuse to see,
To let the jungle alone to wild certainty,
Before humans tried to take what they cannot tame.