There is no career in denying
he’s the father. He rides
against a crocodile to become
history’s double-humped yellow camel

grazing on the margins of your lives.
Trust yourself. Rip that uncertainty
from your eyes. Stop hiding
the child you carry.

She’s blessed with mother-of-pearl,
Atlantic and Caribbean fragrance,
and deep-deep, blue-blue skies.

•••

We decided to hunt for butterflies
on the other side of the fence,
between old statues of father,
in overgrown grass,
the place he kept his untamed calf.

Rolling towards the pit,
(where civets churn out musk,
and the sky gives way to night)
was father’s code to play,
the list of sanctions
too long for me to write.

We put our catch in glass jars,
pushed, touched, and joked
in such a way as not to break
my father’s code. But in the end
you kissed another man.
.
.

Below

They rested on the shoulders
of statues. He said they perfumed
summer with a kind of musk.

We took the beautiful ones
out of the jar, pierced with a pin
and let them dry. The ministry
of their wings kept us awake.

We disappeared to the other side
of the fence where father
kept the untamed calf. He unbuttoned
my pants. I didn’t care, father had been dead
for years, dead and all I wanted
was another kiss.
.
.

Between

Father’s code was the magnet:
his classical order, control, synthesis, rules.

I was ten and a half
on the day of the magnet,
his untamed calf.
He was half a year older
and never quite faithful.

Aunt Enriqueta would read us
stories of houses that made noises,
—padam padam padam—
dogs’ eyeballs slit
with half a razor.
It was rainbows on butterfly wings
and the scent of musk
we found in a kiss
and I do believe in you and you in me.
We’ve been together for half a century.
Now, give this old man one last kiss.

Half a statue was what was left,
half a pasture, half a fence.

•••