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Lisa Marie Basile

Three Poems

Opera

Even when I tip you over and you cannot sing,
this has always been the Cabaletta of our little garden,
half the tamed greenery of love but more the wild
jungle where ghosts kill men on foot.

I know what you mean to sing when you're quiet,
smoking your cigarettes at the window pleading with me
pleading just please stop Italian woman and see me.

This is our opera, coming from plant pots
on the fire escape, sitting through winter barren,
and growing clovers in the Spring. Our belcanto,
swift attacks on the heart:
loud, bloody, broken shimmering.

Baranquilla

Our home was the Baranquilla night, always so sticky
against the white moon. I saw you, in Carnival,

you,

wearing masks over memories,
like me hitting your face until it was as
blue as the butterflies back near your home town,

us in the druid garden where we sat with the
megoliths, or dancing with Ayiti in our bare feet. And in Mesilla,
crying in the cementerio bringing chocolate to the dead. (Later we baked
pan de muerto even though our own love had not risen.)

Our home was the Baranquilla morning, tired
and covered in tiny white spiders,
baking poisoned prayers in our breakfast.

Patasola

The moon has enough decency
to wait as I finish removing my clothes. Only men
light candles when eager.

You stand hard
at ease, like a soldier told to still himself
as a dog would when hungry.

My nudity is a white spider,
the kind you follow through your kitchen, wanting
to hunt it, conquer it and keep in a box.

I remain almost
innocent, just bending to the left enough
so that my hip rounds like a silk handkerchief.
When thighs are shaped like the Putomayo,
men swim.

It is midnight in South America, and I become
the Patasola, luring you from your wet bed
to my patch of green in the jungle.

I look like all the women
you have ever loved. Death! you cry.
Yes, it is me.