Out in the desert,
where you left me,
I turned to cholla.
I looked soft to touch,
but anyone who tried
got the wicked barb
you left behind.
I crawled my way
across México,
not once,
but twice—
where nurses
exchanged the sweet mints
in my purse
to meds.
I fled,
and found myself again—
peering into the
the dark, dewy eyes
of children
selling chicle
on dirt roads
near the freeway
where the poems lay.
I gave all my money, eagerly,
into their beautiful brown hands.
Now, the dive bar,
turned used bookstore,
holds my chair
with a well-read copy of
The Captain’s Verses—
my pirate saying,
pull up, mi rama robada,
I’m buying.
Teddy-bear cholla has a soft, cuddly appearance, but is quite a prickly cactus.
“rama robada” is a reference to Pablo Neruda’s poem, “La Rama Robada” (“The Stolen Branch”) in The Captain’s Verses.
and
dverse Poetics: Left in the Lurch