Mercury in Retrograde
–Sheryl Luna
The day ended badly with a broken ankle, a jinxed printer, and a dead car. The dry yellow grass against the sunset saved me. Roosters pranced across a lawn of shit, proudly plumed in black feathers, bobbing before the gray goats. It was the first day I saw god in the quiet, and found a mustard seed was very small. There I had been for years cursing “why?” and all the gold in the sun fell upon me. There was a white mare in the midst of brown smog, majestic in the refinery clouds. Even the radio wouldn’t work! My mother limps and her hair falls out. The faithful drive white Chevy trucks or yellow Camrys, and I’m here golden on the smoking shock-less bus. I lost language in this want, each poem dust, Spanish fluttered as music across the desert, even weeds tumbled unloved. The police sirens seared the coming night, dogs howled helplessly sad. Lo I walk the valley of death, love lingers in my hard eyes. Mañana never comes just right. I mend myself in the folds of paper songs, ring my paper bells for empty success. Quiero Nada, if I sing long enough, I’ll grow dreamlike and find a flock of pigeons, white under wings lifting awkward bodies like doves across the silky blue-white sky
Photo by Dušan Smetana on Unsplash