ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
THREE POEMS
by Rigoberto González

Point It Out

Your finger is a barb on a hook is a prong.
Resting on my arm it is not as dangerous
as when it sinks into my mouth. Inside me
it's as cool as a thermometer making room, inciting
longings for a toxic taste.

If I'm careless I'll spill the tongue's blood.
It would like that, that finger, having offered me
every other part of my body
on those nights when nights bump elbows when
the crescent moon is just another sharp threat.

My kind believes that a splinter in the fingertip
will travel through the vein and stop
the heart once it plunges in. I suspect
you slip your finger in me while I sleep,
expecting me to suck the menace out.

The Man Who Left You

did not come back. He sent another man
not a man, but a five-fingered web
that muzzles your heart shut at night.
The man who left you was more than that --
five-fingered, yes, but a fist

sometimes gentle as a rose --
knuckles tender-petaled into sleep. You wished
to cut it off at the twisted root, replant it,
let another man grow out of it,
exchange the shards of your insomnia for a bed.

But the man who's here instead has
a familiar hand, bones thick with threats.
It hasn't struck you yet, but it will,
like the hand of the man who left you.
At least that hand stood still when still.

Breads That Hunger

I make love to a man with a button fetish. Correction: a man makes love to my shirt. He yanks each piece of plastic with his teeth and swallows it, then inserts the cusp of his tongue into the buttonhole. I slip out of the sleeves and off the bed and he scarcely notices. Later, he comes looking for me; my shirt slumped across his shoulder. It looks as if I have shed my skin -- the fantasy of meeting the train on the rusty tracks comes to life. Buttonless, I have been stripped of everything that holds me together. He tells me he can replace the shirt. I tell him he can keep me.