my pain was a drink spilling
on the stairs a backhoe grumbling
in the street my pain was breathing
the polvo Mixteca de un callejón
de Tenochtitlán my pain a lather
on the crack of my neck a cat
yowling in the hall downstairs I
thought my pain was a shoe
leaking in the rain in my foot curling
higher and tighter beneath a
blanket of smoke from a fire
in a shack in Temuco, Chile de
1970 el dolor que despierto es un
culo degollador un frente covered
with blackberry canes my
pain was my “pain” a belching steer
pushed at a barbed wire fence my
pain was not my pen bending in the
wind it was not your fork stabbing
a blackened brussels sprout it was a
cloud a suit a puddle thrashing in my
breath where I stood on the sidewalk
and counted the one of my pain
the two of the spreading sky