People who crave the jaw
& not the fox’s gentle tail—
         his land mine

           of teeth; a temporary exit
for those who yearn to return to the coyote’s
                 tent to reclaim their belongings—
the chopped head, the neck
before it was plucked from the rest of the body
like a hen’s for dinner. Antique shops 

         for raccoons’ clawed feet;
                                                    a necklace
for a woman in labor. After the snow melts
the dead return to their natural habitats—
eyes barely shut under the charcoal, whiskers
                                   trapped in the pinecones.
Some secrets are better rolled into the mouths

          of strangers
          when they sleep. A father can make up
suffering’s seasons: leave in the afternoon,
then sneak in through a windowless frame— 

though these, too, can be called winter & fall
          & held by a child’s contemptuous hands
in a garden where only the wind
can be torn from branches.   

                                             Did they really mean
to leave us shipwrecked—those sailors
who recognized flesh but not what the flesh
                                    can camouflage? People covet

the mandible as it’s handed down
          for all to drink from. In his hands
I appear dead—
but here, here in my chest, is where my father
           finds the new continent

           of directions measured in forgiveness.
I sleep in the wilderness,
like a fox loitering in a frozen meadow,
                                         & I’ll feed him forgiveness
                                                                    if he asks.

         Rattlesnake Creek, FL

At first, you said no when I told you
I found taillights, halves of soda cans,
weathered glass in the creek—how one time

I kicked a water moccasin out of a sunken car
radiator, as if this were a surefire way
of convincing you to come. I thought it would

never happen, until you asked me if I was free.
It was June, I was jobless, and you were the one
asking. From the car door to the river,

we were the kind of quiet that stutters inside
an idling engine. We dragged our feet
upstream through braids of water,

ankles like fallen branches carving rifts
in the flow. We stopped at deposits,
shallow gradients where we could read the stream

over a pillow, where the shark teeth collect.
Our knees dug into the riverbed, mosquitoes
latched onto arms, our hands pleasure curled calices.

We lifted fistfuls of sediment, fingers sweeping,
straining, and sifting sieves picking out teeth: fossilized
ray, serrated edges of prehistoric tiger sharks—

remnants of a time when this whole state
was a hidden landmass, rising up from the sea.
When the sun folded over the canopy line,

I lifted a white shark’s tooth from the bottom—
tall as a thumb, crown from wet shale,
broad chevron decorating the base with a stripe

of Miocene perfection. We ran our fingertips
over ridges, a primal texture like nothing
I’d ever touched before. Feet sunk

in the mud of that afternoon, our nerves
shed like wet clothes, you spilled over me
like silt. I held what felt like millions of years

converging in one place—your right hand
an open bloom. I set the fossil in your palm
like it was fate, this hollow space only I could fill.

Below the river, Brooklyn bound,
I hold his poems in one hand
and the cold overhead bar in the other,

reading to myself on the crowded
evening train when a sudden heaving
pulls me from the text. I look up

to see a young man seated with his head
lolling between his knees to the rhythm of the train,
Yankee cap pulled low over his face,

vomiting onto his shoes. Everyone
scatters to the adjacent compartments,
lift scarves up to their noses as they exit.

The vomit stretches like an evening shadow
down one end of the car and I walk towards
the other, lay down on a now vacant bench.

The train sways lightly like a hammock.
Beneath a sun-marred window blossoming
with jewels of frost, I begin to read aloud.

raul & i drive by a yellow sign that reads cuidado–no exponga su vida a los elementos–no vale                   la pena. we pass          a mountain where, tucked away in a place that the relentless sun     cannot reach, the direction & miles            left to the border    are scratched into a boulder.                          raul tells me that yesterday, under a creosote,              he found a knapsack holding                   only a light bulb & a battered bible.       the body was nearby,             so far from god. the legs                        consumed by cramps. the skin wrung             of its sweat. all the water escaping                           the body to try & keep           it cool. the clothes stitched      onto his skin by the sun. last night’s                  full moon a final eucharist his mouth               could not reach. he had a name,                       santos. he also had a wife. or maybe        it was a mother, or a sister,            or a daughter. the wallet didn’t say. we stop at a white crucifix           staked into the ground          where there are no roads       & leave twelve bottles         of water & twelve pears. raul tells me   that he once found                                  an entire skeleton in torn clothes,        the sneakers still tied        to its feet. on our way back       to the orto lado             a flash flood rushes across         the road in front us. we stop,                                      step out, & face it. we leave               the truck running, the speakers aching          y volver             volver. sweat collects at the base           of the gold crucifix necklace           underneath my shirt.                  the rains are short but so heavy,            i say. right raul?                  nests of gila woodpeckers poke         their heads out of a saguaro. i look          at their curious eyes.            raul, i say & the saguaro     blooms. i stare back                   at the flood. i say my mother’s name,         cristina, & desert marigolds crack through a boulder. i say           my father’s name, martin,         & all the novena candles                       in the bed of the truck are aglow.                         i say santos & in a pair of footprints                       in the sand a man is built up      from the part of his body      that touched this earth most.                   i say the names             of my tias, tios, primos, & a bronzed mass            dressed in white rises       from the rushing flood.  their backs are turned to me,           they wear my family’s shoulders.       they head north. before them     the white obelisk marking       the line in the ground                                   crumbles. before them the metal                      fences dissolve like mist.