“When we take a very cold shower, we feel very alive.
It is difficult to take a cold shower. It is difficult to
remain very alive.”
—the shrinking genitals
Twenty pesos bought me a towel
and a used soap cake. Three minutes running,
the water was still smack-gasp
cold and in it the world
condenses itself into the inches
between my pried-open eyes
and the wall’s peeling
blue paint: cracked robin
egg blue, Caribbean ocean
postcard blue, rickety Mexican taxi
blue, a brand new—no, I see it
from inside it. My shiver isn’t
mine, but a salamander vertebrae
vibrating through me. A set
of larger lungs shoved
into my chest pant
in bucket upon bucket
of sí evanescent air.
___________
My clacking teeth clipped
that moment into bits
I swallowed. It is in me.
Now I light like incense
this sense intensification
to let it coil up out my mouth,
and defy the gravity of even
the densest of sentences: there
I was, now make me more this.