1

I bought an alabaster blue bird 
when I was only nine 
visiting Florence with my family.

I remember nothing of the city now 
but the store, everywhere I turned, 
unscratched beauty. It seemed to me 

a grown-up purchase, something precious 
wanting me and late at night I stroked 
its calcite body and whispered 
who?

2

Little girl lovers, we took turns 
playing the naked princess in bed, 
the other a naked prince. 

Even J’s earlobes dripped in the heat. 
She moved away when I was twelve. 
I sent the blue bird with her. 

I cried when I heard 
it was dropped, beak chipped, 
for years regretted giving it.

Everywhere I turned 
what I thought was unbreakable, broke, 
except the craving.

3

I read the lives of the Saints.

4

My mother walked, without clothes, 
down the hallway, round and comfortable 
in her body, peed with the door open,

while at gym I dressed in the bathroom stall, 
a small gold crucifix tapping my flat chest, 
the other girls brazen with their breasts,

their pubic hair dark and dense 
under the changing room light.

5

My father beat me, only once, 
for squinting my eyes for months 
at my mother while he was away at sea,

for the “duh” at the end of my sentences, 
for the way I contradicted his politics. 
Goading me, he said: “I’d be proud 

if you grew up to be a Playboy Bunny.” 
It was the 70’s in Jacksonville, Florida, 
the Jesus Movement occupying, my father 

scared for his modest girl-child, 
a book worm, a good-girl, a wanna-be nun. 
“In my house, my opinion is your opinion,”

he said. For thirteen years, 
my father was God. He broke the contract 
with a belt and I hated him.

6

At the Nikki Cruz Crusade in 1971, 
the Puerto-Rican-ex-New-York-gang-member
found-Christ Crusade, I walked up 

and was saved. Short and muscular, dark 
flowing hair, not unlike that picture of Christ 
I bought and hung in my room.

Run, Baby, Run, he wrote of his life, 
violent and empty. I was running toward 
something new, unknown.

I found Jesus through Nikki. 
Jesus was Nikki. 
I read his book, again and again. 
No one mentions in catechism 
the stifled moans in the longing for God, 
the glimpse of eternity in youthful ecstasy,

the trembling, reeling thoughts
in the dark of the night,

7

the Light entering. I shook

and wept until I fell, 
beyond all reason, 
beyond all things I knew

and I forgave 
              and was forgiven.

8

It stayed with me,
night prayers, night rapture, 
family oblivious of the heat 
behind the closed door, yes,
Jesus stayed. It was love 
I made with God, his Son, 
in my small room 
kneeling beside 
a white French Provincial canopy bed
from Sears, my hands 
folded in prayer 
on a pink lacy coverlet, 
my body bursting over 
and over until I lay prostrate 
on the floor of my bedroom

un-known words tumbling 
over un-known words.

9

Then the words 
became babble and nonsense
and I returned to books,

transfixed by stories:
Oedipus, Lancelot, Rochester,
they all returned, night visitors, 

presumptuous, alluring,
slipping under the covers,
they took me away,

as stories do, away
to where one feels most at home,
or at least away from where you don’t feel 

at home, not not home, away 
from the random placing in a split-
level house, a split-level father, 

pushing me farther and farther away,
each story instructive.
Words on the page 

became my temple. The minister 
called them Satan’s works, or, maybe
it was my father’s new rule

that drove me further in:
No more reading in your room, alone,
the door to your bedroom 

must remain open at all times
(but just before remember
oh body in the dark you knew 
what it meant to be one 
to be alive with the word 
with everything in silence 
stirring with the light 
in the bedroom the Holy of Holies
body tremulous murmuring shy spirit 
               melting 
joining one—).

10

I complied until he forgot,
found ways to sneak,
to pursue what I loved,

to follow the one
who wanted me.

11

Then the words, marauded,
ragged, became mirage, 
dust in stars.

12

Where is that short, dark, Latino stand-in on the stage,
Jesus-Nikki, Nikki-Jesus, flicked words,
sparks into crowds, words that flung

through manicured lawns on the golf course 
behind Fairway Lane, ripping, exposing 
until I stood naked before Him, the Body, 

supple and ready and said yes, oh God, yes—
words beaten by a father
who loved me, 

an earth-bound father,
his jagged words pushing me 
to turn from him. 

13

What can a father do or be 
for a daughter so inclined? 
All I know is

I’ve never come so ripe 
as when I was thirteen,
fresh, timid, open— 

14

Hafiz says, 

You have not danced so badly, 
my sweet, crushed Angel, trying to hold hands 
with the Beautiful One.

So what if the music has stopped.

Yet, there are moments, still,
when I’m walking, when a smell 
on Alameda Santa Lucia simmers in the air,

when the women in their huipiles
stand beside the spoiled and the dung 
of the previous day, stand with their aprons

beside stacks of avocadoes, beside
newspapers announcing another murder, 
another politician in jail,

when a voice shouts to everyone,
“Cinco manzana por ocho,”
when some sharp thing

pierces my chest and I shudder,
and that old-new-familiar-new
stab, that it-thing, 
circles around his words, that 
lance that wound that union

jumps out 

strikes me and I feel it—
again