Organ Failure
When my grandfather drew his last breath
he turned to my mother’s pink face, her beehive
prom-hair. He whispered fire, “There’s no such thing
as a friend mijita.” His heart then gave out.
And life is like his heart, all fat, all grease,
pink flush, love-hate. He was raised on menudo
tripe and burned tortillas. Friends swarmed him.
Their honey need forever hurt him before the stings,
before he lost his soul in their factories.
He sold grapefruits in a wooden stand;
his daughters sold eggs along dusty streets.
And I am learning the hero’s dry soul,
the way hot sand darkened the streaks of his tears.
How he’d cure the wasps. My sister stung
on the cheek, running, wailing. An image transfixed,
was it all foreshadow?
It is how a hand reached forth in full youth draws back,
how some dogs run themselves thin believing in the win.
Does age make us brittle? Is it mostly the poor
who grow cranky as unsoaped leather?
Was it beauty? Adonis’ blood flowering the snow?
When my friend’s liver gave out she had d grown thin
and selfish as any drone! How death carries a fifth-
grade pout, and the body cramps half-glorious.
The poor buy their way to aloneness.
I can hear the organs give out in rooms
where white walls echo as seashells.
Nurses scurrying to some future jet-plane vacation.
And the body a shell of liquid, swells, sways,
forgets to know.
To turn an ear, forgive a world afraid?
Her body grows cold. To give a melody
of yellow roses, a poem, my breath, only
then would I shy to hold a thinning body.
I am, as it is, too young and arrogant
to forgive or know.
Sheryl Luna
