Palace of the Governors, City of Holy Faith

O noble capitol house that Peralta built you are long
inhabited fortress and palace promenade

If trees could talk    they would whisper handfuls
multi-tongued through thick adobe walls

Spanish   Tiwa   Tewa   bugle
of Confederates and curators talking

of lattice and lace   wide dining
table for history    you whisper us into a prince’s room

Old is the adjective    First born on the square
Fringed by burros carting firewood to winter casas

Occupation is your middle name   Po’ Pay’s revenge
for all the icons taken       Wallace’s respite muse

crucifixion written in secret light
Fiestas in the front yard Wagons in the courtyard

Yellow leaves still falling as legislators eased
horses into stables lined anxious washboards

Your inhabitants changed like stunning sunsets

and chilly dawns

Today a concho belt of natives own your long stoop
years inlaid with abalone and coral All eyes shaded

by ancient portal One old trail of men ending here
Ghosts of women in broomstick skirts and children

hidden religions revived mariachi guitars

bringing lightning

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Shameless Early Promotion

My poetry book, The Fiction of Stillness, is available for pre-order now on Barnes and Noble. Official release date August 1st, 2024. Here's a taste: ... The table is smooth and round symmetric The chairs are haphazardly placed at the end of this day I have breast cancer I say into the receiver [communities must] pool resources How to produce the sounds of the imaging report into sentences that resonate with months of postponement weighty contrast on my right side computing and comparing IM ratios for greater insight not sufficient to prove the efficacy of screening ...

Vessel

Inside I imagine puckered cups of butter cookies nested in paper that releases a sigh But instead there may be fiction within wishes never reciprocated Playbill of redundant arguments One black glove found fraying This vessel on an emptied table solo temptation is labeled with another’s name Guarded initials as if carved in melting snow A tool unsuited to the task of prying open Not yet valentine

Open Mic, Cafe Babar

I remember arriving, not the prettiest but appealing to certain bards in the back room, entering through the Castro Valley corner door, walking the postage stamp sized Cinzano bar curated by a man from Detroit who named his establishment after a certain French elephant in a children’s book I arrive with budding consciousness around politically correct solidarity for disheveled neighbors, entering the cigarette lit night rising to tin siding ceiling to floor thumping insistence Bruce and Joie and David and Laura and John, their ash and sweat accumulating as I waited patiently for my place on the crumpled sign-up sheet Today, three decades later, I sit in a Santa Fe gallery named simply Here, and a poet reads to us of roadrunners and a bear and a continuation of the call for preservation of our environment There is an otherworldly hum outside the window of leaded glass The owner sidles up behind me and pushes the fr...

As Mourning Doves Persist

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