Insights

Everybody knows that Mexico
is an invented country.

I will leave
when everyone's asleep

when the grass stands
still and yellow,

when no bird's song calls
me back,

when the last hail
peels the last tree.

Mexico waits for me.
My suitcase is packed.

I will leave at dawn,
in the hour of executions.

I will leave when I can
open this door

from the inside,
when I can hear

the applause from the walls,
when I have numbered my steps.

Mexico is waiting.

Leaving the Body

I won't be missed
not like a comb
or an earring
or a lipstick:

elements of beauty
and decoration--
lies, soapy smooth,
upheld with real

quotations, a protecting
hand across
the dazzling body.
Do you know me?

Will you
still know me?
_I wouldn't know you,_
someone sighs. My goal

is my beginning,
and I contort
into another O,
another zero

on the road to Oz.
Yellow, yellow,
yellow. Everything
now means something,

now that I've begun
to look
for meaning. I spoke
with a pregnant woman:

When do children grow?
At night?
Like the grass?
And birth?

A final cut
through eternity.
Don't answer.
Don't be quiet.

We smile at each
other, then turn,
like in those famous
movies. Cut.

Even this time
is time. I file
it, holepunch
the pages, read

the headings.
The possible has no name
yet. I search
its skin

for birthmarks
but find fewer
than expected.

My Fortune Teller

I keep her in the basement
and torture her a few times
a week when I am tired
and her sullenness insults me.
She has grown small and mean
in captivity and her fortunes
have soured. Last week
I was told to take out
insurance--ten thousand
for a peaceful death
and seven times as much
for a peaceful accident,
for the shoes under the bed
and the wheelchair
to carry me around
in a hundred years when
the tram no longer runs.
I was supposed to buy soap
from a door-to-door salesman
for my neck and hers.
I beat her severely
for several hours until
my arms ached. She snorted,
grinned toothlessly, and put
her bloody lips to my ear:
These things I know
well--it has begun,
perhaps it will also end.
She has been quiet ever since,
a week now without a fortune--
grass grows over my grave,
someone will have to pay
for this.