those cathode ray tubes again
those blue pixels, now brighter
than the glare of a smooth sheet
of aluminum under the Zapotec sun,
the grains smaller than salt blown across
watercolors, than a celery stalk glib
and tight, it’s almost offensive
I hadn’t seen your face for weeks
I saw the black fold-up table where we
would shove tortellini into our mouths
and wash down with a glass of red Powerade;
see there the manmade brass items like grinders
and keys arranged prettily around ribboned
grass and astronaut ice cream wrappers,
items belonging to a space cowboy
such as yourself, charolastras be us
rubbing the blunt end of a pencil
onto my temple, I see that solid, Moorish
nose and big teeth hiding behind bigger lips
and the thick hairs of your golden beard
interrupt the air like blades of sawgrass
these things we keep in the absence
of the other, of trust and boiling bodies
god, I missed all of these things —
so I choked up, and my cheeks
puckered and tasted like the tannin
planes where the Everglades meets the Gulf
