Poem in three: Nerja, Spain I. My Life as Olive Oil
We walk through Mediterranean streets,
the locals tightly
gendered,
foreign couples hand in hand,
sun-streaked from
hazy
beach days, tomato-skinned...
we tickle air of
propriety
and tourism
you firm in every step
the hidden
beach
is down a road from a pueblo
where we trip on
sun,
salt-water, and sea elements...
back at a small-town
café
I feel my life as Olive Oil,
you, my precocious
mariner,
devouring canned spinach
in fluid motions
and
passing it along...
the muscular man is always
blowing his
top
and slenderly I open my mouth wide
and reveal trembling
tonsils,
recoiling from Brutus,
someone will gladly pay us
Tuesday
for a hamburger today...
our purse is nearly empty
and
our cut-offs
stiff and sun-bleached...
after long sleep
I
am plagued by dualities...
years later, alone, I cut my hair
and
wear bell-bottoms.
i'm strong to the finish
You,
somewhere
with
your one tattoo,
I, with my two feet,
plant firmly one
and
then the other.
my visualization,
a paramount
picture...
in my small kitchen
the air is new york
heavy
the olive oil is bottled
and quaint, shipped,
old-world
and dependable,
elixir and tonic...
those olive trees
seen
through tinted windows
on bus rides
to the coast
rolling,
rolling
in dry earth
are corking and porous,
juicy in
age,
and branch leaves of thousands
a constant between us
in
these post-modern flashes
the celluloid dreams
the digital
age
the rhythm of sunlight
and the Mediterranean tide
in,
out,
reach forth,
draw back...
fizzle, fizzle salt
bubble,
bubble sand
sea vista
sea smell
sea sound
sea texture
sea
aftertaste
olive and oily.
II. Between
Blinks
On the beach at sunset
people disperse
like
seeing sunrays through sunglasses
cut through the day's left-over
humidity
I uncover my eyes
and tell you thoughts are
private
perhaps because you've
come walking towards
me
breathing this essence
handing me the perfect stone
(only
you could find)
shaped like the tides of a full moon
It is
this well-formed
Inexplicable undefinable quality (I could call
love)
that I see clearly once again
as obvious as
the
negative space
joining cliff to sea-rock
it is and it isn't
I
want to point it out
and find thin air
where I was sure
there
was solid mass
and realize visions are like that
I scan the
rifts of far-off mountains
and you are actually speaking
of the
flowers at my feet.
Just when I've resigned myself
to the
filter of individual sight
we see the same ring around the sun and
feel like limb-less amoebas
in long-ago waters.
Suddenly I have
dissipated
into negative space
surrounded by solid air
and I
don't have to explain
the perfect form
of our common
breath.
Nowists
We are
our feet
balancing
weight
with each step
ankles scratched
onwards and
finding
paths through reeds
and along
ancient irrigation
channels
we will walk
arriba abajo
izquierda derecha
and
find ourselves
on the same shores...
And later
I will be
happy
when I see
organized roses
preened shrubs
framed
plazas
stiff movements
around me
while your head lays
in
my lap
your hair salty
and knees dusty
I will have an
aftertaste
of this terrain
and remember the purple
undershade
of this wild flower.
Ruth E. Dominguez