VOLLEYBALL POEM II: IN MEXICO, AFTER WE ALL STOPPED LIVING


Flakes and refuse of old life abandoned in Rinconada
centuries ago, relinquished along an alley just as it all
ended, and here, in converse to the way a mirror
might refuse to admit the arrival of some count or
windigo, the shapes escape the notice of the naked eye
itself --or would, if anyone still lived to see it--
and instead enliven in the reflections of rain for want
of a mirror, so that each drop contains inside it
the picture of life that disappeared, all mingled hues
and falling like confetti, mariachi-coat-rain red
as the blood of their own unexpecting lives, violin-
and-vihuelas-rain brown and bashful and spattering
that place where the howls and the music crowded,
at the alley's conclusion, the tall white net, the hot
pink volleyballs and, left in the piece with the plainest
descent, the ghosts of jugadores remembering.

Volleyball game.

VOLLEYBALL POEM I: MASCOT


A blue bird—a sudden bird with a neck
firmly anchored between the shoulder blades,
so that no dumb twitching from side
to side exists—is prostrate in a fine bed
prickly and studded with antique white,
and together cot and bird are rambling
on a float trip along the viscera, slats
careening into the intestinal wall and
dislodging the bird from a birdbed dream,
fussing as its eyes rejoin the current
as bears will bristle when stroked
out of caves, and flaps its wings, and shifts
over on its side many times, pulling tight
the birdlinens over its breast, just under
its beak, to close its eyes, and twitter, and intone,
one song flying through the human cavity
as an egret would skim and slap along a lake
in December: Wake up Dakotah, it is time
to play volleyball.

Girl with a volleyball.