summer flung herself over the last of the peonies

—after Lunita Valeria Velázquez

in the obscene eruption/summer’s face is clean
& shameless/summer can fit the moon in her mouth
leaves a trail of clothes in the sand & has already swum
to the island across the river/summer has scooped
up the fallen fledgling & tucked our molting cry
into the lace hydrangea for safekeeping/summer
has three secrets, at least one she’ll tell no one

a woman i love wonders if the lights are the departed floating around her crown each morning

she tells me i am a transformer. i think immediately of the viral
video of a child’s cardboard costume. red autobot precisely scaled
to particular small limbs. somewhere a parent has done so much
& who is to say it was right or enough? in mazatlán my own parents
disembark a cruise ship to buy a souvenir poncho. this is the currency
they have to acknowledge i tend messes that are not mine.

she tells me i have some karma to hold space for the horror family
can be & yet my lord in heaven remains relating which creates
relations that are sometimes all fledgling. frightening hunger
& unhinged beak. in truth she prefaces all clairvoyance by calling
it cold. but the firelight of meaning is making the chilly vacuum
inhabitable. the bigger story helps me hold the small story.

i am someone else. i have cleaned the foaming tongue. wiped salty
release from two slack tear ducts. kissed still-warm forehead
& already-cooling hands. brushed silver hair. lifted window for
departure. asked permission to pick three slender stems & laid it
all light on still breast bone. the sunset is exquisite cloud ribs against
free pastel sky. the old barn creaks down into itself & the ground.

the seed

if i am generous i can pretend the desert neighbor’s generator is earth
purring. i am lizard perched high on a rock hillside amid blazing poppies
concerned only with small contentment of sun. an army of tufted spirals snares
my soft poncho & we pause in heat’s sink toward ocean. by some miracle, some body
somewhere withstands two bullets. by some network calculation elders worry holes
into fear stones. i take small temperatures with unanswerable questions. i want
to hear what i cannot hear. the seed is willing to sit with this for longer than i can.
i understand the missing beat when i ask how are you? i didn’t mean to ask
such a bad question. our worn-in trails are so comfortable, aren’t they? we’ve been
waiting all season for a good surprise at the turn. a twilight rustle to carry 1000
upon 1000 thank yous to fiery petals while ancestors warp sky in tunnel language—
it’ll only make sense midair like a seed travels. if we can see at all we can see what
will not fit into a body. there are our two-headed hungers tendriling into the road.
relatives who are cirrus clouds. ask any medicine woman to pull a card & it will speak
to what never intended to quench our ruthless patience, the clean mineral sweat
of other efforts, a chimera for a childhood pet. you imagined none of it. it being
miracle this whole place moves at speed— the psychic dust cloud boarding the late
train, any distance we travel for hospitable soil. once more it is clear: the seed
is delicate mission barbed into a cloak. we cling like celadon lichen to boulder.
this time i looked closer before i was asked to look closer. possibility another slight
corkscrew turned between thumb & forefinger. the seed spoke first, still whispers—

frankly, it’s dirty/never-ending praying in our swamp

—for my subconscious

you/i recently wriggled out of the python of not one but two addictions
or perhaps twisted right out of shed skin as we ourselves serpent/writhing/alive
(smooth bodies we coax to ensnare us at the mall pet shop when we are small &
there are even malls) or perhaps we are rare two-headed gopher snake (all four
eyes we lock gazes with for who-knows-how-long at that zoo in new orleans)
either way we are newly out of our own grasp & i even heard you say it feels good.

i want to tell the experts sometimes you summon a form like mine. we drag
blankets from our beds & hold hands under some gate inside (vacation kids
who steal one exotic night together on sand). i want to say your skin is so soft (our grip
tightens). we rest our legs up the walls, our solid shapes blocking doorways & curl
into empty/unformed space. us sweet/restless (glancing back from fast cars on
mountain roads at the explosions we set). we dream our bioluminescence guides us.

we both sleep with our free hand unusually contorted & pushed to cheek
to satisfy some womb memory (sun-baked rocks, dust lullabies in thick gold air.
we are just summer babies keeping our extremities warm). i want to say dissolved
in dark you are mother/child/sentinel/guide. i want to say our days of blood magic
are behind us but isn’t it all blood magic? all i’m saying is we can be precise (there
are these reasons we slither in & out of our own understanding).

watch from inside as we shift. i want to say what the world thinks it sees
has more to say about the snake charmer than us. we want to be unafraid/swallowed
by ourselves (never-before-documented interdimensional/rare/ravenous). we know
when to let go because we sense our own slowing heartbeat.