What I Have From You

A jar of pork fat

from the small pig your rancheros

slaughtered for New Year’s Eve.

El aceite del chancho,

miraculously slid through Atlanta customs.

The same nebulous color of

the clouds of Peñas Blancas, suspended

somewhere between a solid and a liquid.

 

A quart of coffee beans

(we picked together in Mulukuku).

Dark and urgent.

 

And three firm, white ovals of queso.

Salty and strong,

redolent of tropical pasture.

 

What I have from you is

a longing I had long

surrendered as a delusion of youth.

Extravagant pleasure to be so

thoroughly investigated by your mind.

 

How many languages has your tongue?

What words would Neruda and Dario

use to illustrate the sunset

at Las Peñitas Playa?

Sultry, torrid stripes of color sliding

down into the Pacific after their creator.

 

We were thirty minutes late because

 

the roads were cratered and horrible,

and we were twice held up by a band

of niños stretching a rope strung with rags

across el camino, demanding coins.

Still there was so much beauty

 

When our crappy, rented car jostled

near to death by the roads, refused to start,

you bit through the wire with your teeth and

made a fresh attachment to the battery

 

and turned the key,

traveling onward to find

our dinner of whole fish, fried,

both head and tail arching off the plate.

And rum.

 

Por supuesto, el ron.

Fleur de Cana, that only tastes so perfect

south of the keys, with the pale orange

juice still warm from

strong-handed squeezing.

A bowl of small, tart limes and a whole

bucket of the coveted ice

bejewling our stilted and thatched dining

room open to the star’s reflections.