come with
the rain
no more
rain sun
rooster chorus
and hammered
wood
on Saturday
it’s far off
music
another
version of
La llorona
from a field
beyond a field
each song and field
skittering on across
the roof
lizards maybe
not birds though
small white flocks
have been flying
through drying corn stalks
fading sunflowers
all morning
the roosters started
at four
the goats and sheep
screamed at six
as if the sun
needed greeting
they headed for
the river
the oxen
among themselves alone
feeding on dry grass
stayed behind
beginnings marked by
a tanager, two tanagers
and something else
a fast flash of yellow
then small knives then
comes the falling into
this the dream
this dawn
then sleep sleep
and:
here’s light here’s blue here’s day
and those mountains still dark and green
are not immortal either
around our heads and
bodies like the bees
in that neighbor’s house
who have turned
her hot water heater
into a hive when
you open the house front
door there are
black widow spider webs
black widow spiders
that’s what we’re used
to now
the bees their honey
the spiders
Mark Statman’s newest book of poems is Exile Home (Lavender Ink, 2019). Statman’s poetry collections include That Train Again (Lavender Ink, 2015), A Map of the Winds (Lavender Ink, 2013) and Tourist at a Miracle (Hanging Loose, 2010). His translations include Never Made in America: Selected Poetry of Martín Barea Mattos (Lavender Ink/diálogos, 2017). Black Tulips: The Selected Poems of José María Hinojosa (University of New Orleans Press, 2012), and, with Pablo Medina, a translation of Federico García Lorca's Poet in New York (Grove 2008). A recipient of awards from the NEA and the National Writers Project, he is Emeritus Professor of Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School, and lives in San Pedro Ixtlahuaca and Oaxaca de Juárez, MX.