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pronounce Auntie I’s name.
     
    Today begins Elvis week and I’s heart pounds, Elvis sweetening her meaty lining.
     
    Though her name’s the shape of an “I,” Auntie I’s the shape of an O. In childhood fotos an O. A wonder she’s ever known love.
     
    A returning G.I., E’s sweet on a girl rendered helpless when she loses her top in the staccato of waves.
     
    At the party that night, he renders a song he sweetens with dance, a shag in his tail for the swoony damsels.
     
    When I look down, eyelids of apostles are sweetened shut from too much dust, all my overtouching.
     
    When Elvis clenches his jaw as someone else speaks, it’s all his overacting.
     
    Tupelo, Mississippi, 1929. A child who would be a very tan king is born.
     
    On the TV Elvis soothes the savage gypsies who store booty in a shiny caboose; the Acapulco cliff divers; shirtless, trapeze artists; a tizzy of dizzy love-hung women; seriously, devoutly, desperately nuns; bullfighters—make that one. Ah, but Don Pedro can this one sing?
     
    All along, the black gum in our front yard fizzes with caterpillars; locusts scorch the sky with a sticky, torch song.
     
    In some other cases, the black gum’s rendered, the black tupelo and the tupelo gum.
     
    In waves the curious neighbors clench at the brown woolies barking up the black gum’s skin.
     
    “Green surrenders to a staccato of Os,” goes the leaves’ fading stomata.
     
    When the black gum’s leaves go faint and holy, my parents put their feelers on.
     
    At dusk, the dusty apostles also fade as Christ begs for strength in the face of death!
     
    How the silky caterpillars litter the pavement, falling through the holes they’ve eaten, to death.
     
    With our fingers, we clench ice cream scoops between saltines, sweeten avocado with sugar and swoon.
     
    When Auntie I rings fizz from the Os of a sponge, her fingers bark from all the bleaching.
     
    “She’s as big as a house,” Mom and Dad pound her when she isn’t around or isn’t looking.
     
    She steeps her branch in the murky water, fingers for the rice sweetening the bottom of the pan.
     
    Pick your poison , says the neighbor, a peevish red bud blooming in his yard.
     
    Gripped with love, I pound white rice until I’m full, white bread till I’m numb.
     
    A chalk of scorched meat on the bottom of the pan. An oily O on the chicharrón rag.
     
    Outlines of apostles I’ve fingered into Os, even scalded with grease they keep sleeping.
     
    When Dad starts with war buddies burning monkeys from trees, Mom goes to sweep the brown woolies to the street.
     
    I gum on the chewy chicharrón bark, at the fatty white parts: hard swallow.
     
    If food is love, pound-for-pound, Auntie Ining’s a hunk o’ hunk o’ .
     
    Wise men say : “When Christ calls, fill his jug with laughter, his eye sockets with song.”
     
    No black people sun in Blue Hawaii, nor Fun in Acapulco, ni viven en Las Vegas tampoco, leaving one explanation: too tan.
     
    In a canoe Elvis fingers his tiny instrument. O flaming ukulele of passion! Ukelele of desire!
     
    What a gas . Dad pounds his foot, sweetening his story with, The singed bodies fizzed.
     
    Elvis, have you ever known love? Have you ever never wanted the girl and still known love?
     
    A ticked off Mom and Dad tweeze bodies with fingers through their spiny hair.
     
    I watch them in wonder through the kitchen window, the two Os in the front of my head.

HABLAR ESPAÑOL SIGUE ASÍ
    Un pájaro en el árbol canta a un papagayo en la jaula, en el piso al lado.
     
    Mientras patina, la aguja toca los surcos labrados en el vinilo del álbum.
     
    Frente a la carnicería un hombre, nombre de una mujer tatuado en el pecho.
     
    Las letras en su pecho se enverdecen con los años.
     
    CHRIS TINA . ¿Quién es esta mujer de piel?
     
    En la periferia, las ráfagas verdes escapan los antiguos apilados de humo.
     
    Su olor en la funda de la almohada demora su salida.
     
    Una boca verde, el gusto de los