Last Telegram

There are things you never forget
that reside somewhere inside

your bones: the span of a chord,
the way water tastes when it first

shoots out of the mouth of a rusted
iron pump. Razor-bite of acid applied to

a wart, the near-human scream of a goat
awaiting its death under guava

trees. And everyone comes from imagined
origins: land of dark sugar hills, land 

of multiplying gravestones. You can clean 
windowpanes with balled-up newsprint 

and their shine will be like cathedral
glass dipped in milk. This is your

history, and you bind it in ink and crosses. 
You were born in its shed but left for an 

unholy land. Whatever you erect in its image 
becomes an orchard where you will spend 

the rest of your days like a bride who can't
return until every fruit is charred or picked 

clean. Who has decided to live in the present. 
That is, between the crescent's horns.