Porto

Bridgelegs remain still in the maze of water that veins through the hills.
One of them grows from the side of the riverbank near the port vinyards.
It's metal calf pierced through orange tiled roof, supporting train and car.
A cable car runs to it overlooking the university. The cable car floats
as if it were an antique industrial dandelion seed caught constantly
between a river and a heaven, level with the city's hilltop.

C/ Val.

A long cracked sidewalk: Calle Valencia,
fine bricked connection from city to seniors.
Catalogue of atrophied limpy clothes lines
Sagged perfectly between plant balconies.

Their wet shirts like flags for immigration.
Wet shirts like flags above bull fight
ticket resale box offices, and the burlesques
of spinning meat at döner kebab spots.
A wet political shirt like a flag that reads
"todo sobre ustedes."

When Asked to Define "Fuzzy" by Non-Native English Speakers

adj. texture between hairy and soft
as in rugs or stuffed animals
even sweaters possibly

also sound
the crunchy kind
as in garage rock
and old stereo recordings

in spanish - borroso

noun. perhaps lint or
a collection of air litter
on clothes or furniture

also slang for police
if you like 70s counter
culture.

completely: it could describe
vagueness. useless complexity.
think morals or language.

Blue Lagoon

I fell with the blunt of my wrist first.

Volcanic rock sliced the skin
sending ribbons of blood to water.
The salt colonizing the wound in a flood.

I swam anyway.

Spanish Orange

This saturated baby skull has fallen.
It rolls toward my sandled feet from off
it's tree. The navel iris staring at me
as if the eyeball had been deadened gray
and plucked from a cyclops.

I pick it up, and we are aquainted.

I think you're an alien but you're native.
My thumbnail runs over your coarser pores
and penetrates your skin to see if your insides
are different from normal
or to know your bloody inards.

A fleshy ball of threads and meat
that's stinging puss latches to a hangnail.

This is the venom I have chosen.
This is the foreigner's control.

La Latina - El Rastro Market

Fakeleather-bound backpacks
cascade on top of each other
under a handwritten stamp: "25 euro!"
They are lining a wall between
the faux Morrocan and gitano-hippy
tapestry stands that proudly display brass
statues spraypainted with gold.

A wrinkled woman burns incense
accross the street. First rose, then dragon's blood
then rose. The clouds sink into her tanned crows feet
and the empty space of her tarped enclosure.
A tourist smokehouse. A cage. A garden.

Choirs of Yoruba drummers
snake between the shops and balconies
of apartments. Their echoes broadcasting
the soundtrack for no one
and for outdoor tapas.

Sunday's business is surviving.

Chueca

Tucked between the fetish bars and sex shops,
 opens the alleys where daytime prostitutes take
their smoke breaks. They go to the gay district
to be at peace. To laugh the same as the  bourgeoisie
brunch elite, trendy in their occupation of the
neighborhood. To chat like the elderly
queers smiling above their wrist
resting cane handles. To disappear with
drag queens, femme lesbians, unbearded butch men,
homeless teens from Galicia, and the fleeting
smell of sweat, beer, and urine from last night's
club crowd.

Calle Beso

Down this road
is the plaza
where Queen Isabella
would burn heretics
on moss crosses, claiming
divine intervention -
- a terrorist attack is always theatre.

On the opposite end of the street
rests the yellow house nestling the bosoms
of the mountain. Where a long
blonde haired woman died for three days.
Kept alive for her beauty, she awoke
from the second recorded catatonic state.

From then on, people in Granada
attached ropes from the wrists
of casket bound corpses
to bells.

To ensure they were really dead.

The Borzois of Casino de Reina

Five of them
huddle in a circle by
an orange tree where
they have peed.

In awe
of their similarities.
Skeletal aliens
sniffing, prancing, to
the distant sounds

of three ametuer flamenco
guitarists. They are clapping
their branch legs to the dry
ground. Jumping over lapdogs.
They are thin and sad.

A private show to the
siesta smokers who
watch from the benches above,
flicking cigarette filters to the
Borzoi´s dancefloor.

The Last Train

As my metro card hummed
behind a turnstile. I saw the next
train sign towards Moncloa digitally shift
from 0 minutes to 15.

I truly thought I would never
make it back.

Chamartin Station's styrofoam-white lights
fell like rain. I had to pee and
the digital sign estimated
that the last train was now
13 minutes away.

Pacing the tiled floor,
I witnessed the station seemingly expand
to accommodate Saturday
night's final crowd of torn denimed partykids,
knockoff handbag salespeople, and
late shift streetperformers.

At 12:29 the echoey metro screech
howled through its tunnel. The last
of the yellow line sounded so self richeou
tonight. It probably knew it's importance.

At 12:30 I boarded the tinny
vessel. The windows squeaked when
I pressed my finger down them to
draw a smiley face.
The fog filled in the translucence
when the doors shut, sealing
the crowded, breathy heat of Madrilleños.

A young father with his strollered
child and the child's mother
stood impatiently towards the door.
He padded his forehead sweat
with baby wipes while the child
let out innocent screams. I could make out from
his conversation to the mother
"This place is big. I want to return to Cuba."

She looked at him and then at the baby.
She plucked the little one out of the buggy
hugging the tantrum out of him.
"I do not like it in Cuba" she whispered
in between headkisses.

Before the father could respond the
Train lurched the family, the stroller, the Saturday night crowd,
and me into the front end of the train,
announcing over the itchy speaker,
"proxima parada: Lavapies."
I excused myself through the crunch, out of the train.

How strange to have such a serious conversation
on the metro, I thought, still needing to pee.

Catedral de Santa María de la Sede - rough draft

The tower feels like a memory

its mossy stilt 

piercing the short spikes of 

gargoyle noses and the staffs

of statued saints.

I remember the feeling of

its brick ramp. Where horses 

climbed and conducted

ninety degree hallway turns.

It feels like work. Like patient defeat.

Like arabic engraved on the wall below.

Like the Incan gold altar that is beautiful but stolen.

Embajadores Violin

The Andalusian busker's
daily siesta is a song
through the thin vein of the yellow line.

In between each murmur,
she says "This instrument is
as old as Spain! My CD is only three Euro!"

The violin lay smooth
on the edge of her veil.
It keeps the tempo against the tinny

pings of ten cent coins in
it's case. I want to hold the
instrument by its base like

a fat disc. I want to pluck the strings.
I want to be on the list of its curious touchers:
with careful toddlers, and Spanish bohemians

Prose Poem

Outside the market where I bought pens, a candle, and a lighter, I noticed two students I knew from my spanish class. One, from the Czech Republic, studies psychology and the other, from Morocco, physics. After subtly defending our respective studies, we moved from strangers to acquaintances (slowly like drying hair). The czech girl asked the moroccan girl if she liked living in a desert. She didn’t know the english word for desert so she actually said “the place where there is many dead things”. The moroccan girl said that she was not from the desert. That there are beaches. The czech girl said psychology is so much what we don’t know about what we say. The moroccan girl said drinking is forbidden in Morocco, but also that she loves the wine here (Spain). I later used the lighter I bought to spark her social cigarette. In between puffs, she said that physics is the study of how everything is.

Concerning Locks in Public Places

"Isabella,

siempre te amare

- Álvaro"

sharpied on a lock hanging

shut, on the crossbar of

a mermaid's bull-horn lyre.

Common like a valentine

on heart shaped candy.

The iron siren splintered out

above the lake from

the Monument to Alfonso XII.

The padlock fused

just above her fountain.

Two metals tucked into each other,

the elder showcasing her jewelry.

Neither humans nor metal could ever

know the consequences of "forever"

yet they remain bound with that message.

Locks are not permanent,

they're just very hard puzzles

to solve.