It looks like grandma's
from the funeral.
Cheap.
How do you buy a shirt
for your dead mother?
Green, like flowers hanging
upside down.
There is a pit opening up on the front
lawn, and with all this barbell sorrow,
I could jump in and sink
into history.
Archetypes sit there
wearing polyester, humming.
Everyone looks blurry behind
my eyes and my heart
is on fire.
Cesar's Coffee
Cesar says it through the hovering ring,
that I am nothing but a dumb gringa
waiting for Quetzalcoatl to come. He is
sitting outside my little place
on a plastic white chair stained with
cigarette holes.
He hands me a can of El Pico when he comes,
tells me to make it strong, not the
way Americans make it.
I grind lemons on the counter while
the coffee falls into the pot, because lemons
cure heartache. I watch him through the window,
the curtains are the color of paize.
He has big knuckles tapping
on the table, he is blowing the smoke
at me, making my hair smell like
cheap cigars, the kind he keeps in
his sweaty, wet jean pockets
all day outside the stupid
pelicula place.
A church bell rings, and the coffee
is done. I feel stupid for being white.
BIO
Lisa Marie Basile is a writer and editor living in New York, though she would much prefer to be in the desert. Her full-length poetry collection, "A Decent Voodoo," will come out in 2012 by Červená Barva Press.
She is Editor-in-Chief of Caper Literary Journal, a monthly poetry and prose journal — and has published work in CommonLine, Aphros Literary Magazine, Vox Poetica, The Medulla Review, Melusine and Physiognomy in Letters, Feile-Festa and The Broome Street Review among others. A full page feature on her work, inspiration and background is also printed in Poets and Artists Magazine's February 2010 issue.