My guardian angel                                                                                                                  
has a tamarind house
on the Martinzote straight.

Gabriel is my guardian angel. Dressed
in basil he sleeps in the sky. He drinks milk
when he gets up. And who hasn't had an angel
inlaid with bones? Sometimes I call out to him
on a river bank somewhere. He pulls me serenely
to his heart. He's like an island,
his eyelashes are as long as hibiscus leaves.
When it rains he stays by me. I keep his body warm
in a pineapple basket in my room.

Gabriel
baptizes my body
in my twenty-ninth year
with bluing water.

I'VE BEEN GIVEN EARS AND FEARS

My father appears on the Cuira with cold in his bones and dry skin like dwarf banana leaves when he plays
with hops in the sky.
No one worries now where my father is. He lives in a place before death. Sometimes I go to his river
to drink a glass of water,
or I write him an Our Father. What's pitiful is his impassive flesh at the edge of the word.

I've been given ears and fears.

On an afternoon as warm as a crow's wing
I've dreamt my fright.

A coughing gathers sun and storm
in my mother's cup; it draws signs and tokens
in my father's empty room.

So then,
why the goodbye,
why the flowers,

and skin ablaze with dread
as if I was biting the fruit of the lamb.