>> I would like to change the pace a little bit and read a --
-- a poem that first appeared in Sinister Wisdom and then just lately appeared
in La Chicana Lesbian Anthology that Carla Trujillo edited it.
And there is a, on the cover there's a woman, a painting by Ester Hernandez,
of a woman kind of dikey looking with spiked hair, very short hair.
And there is la Virgen de Guadalupe.
Have you seen that book?
You have it at the bookstore?
Ok. It's called Night Voice.
When we met, I fell into her eyes like falling into warm rock, blurting out everything.
How my cousins took turns at night when I was five, eight, ten.
Her eyes asked for nothing but I turned myself inside out,
plucked my heart and offered it to her.
She looked away.
I hated the coaxing in my voice that bitch whine
and then she said Bueno, just this once.
It rained hard that day and afterwards, she sat up and stretched arms and bare back glistening.
The sounds of the ranas entered the room with the night.
Both were deafening.
I stood at the door of the heaven I thought out of reach.
When I touched her I could barely breathe and the smell of her toasted almonds and yeast,
I could never get near it enough and the wanting making my arms weak.
The taste of her, even now if I bring my fingers up to my nose, I get a whiff of her.
Lightning scored the window panes, a brutal light hit my eyes filling the room,
surprising the shun in her face.
She slid it back behind her eyes but I'd seen it and by the time thunder shook the mirror,
something else had entered the room and I knew she would leave me.
Parts of her were walking out into the llovizna toward the lightning piercing the horizon.
She lay beached on the white sand and before the sweat dried on her body,
I knew she needn't have done anything.
One stroke of her hand on my belly and I would have gone off again,
but I lay on the white sheet, mouthful of sand, my face shut like a door.
Somehow the thunder had gotten inside me and I wanted to say I'm not your perra, a cheap shot,
but it would have softened her mouth.
By then, I wanted nothing from her, had turned away and lay listening to the rain
and the frogs, the birds had stopped singing.
When her hand touched me, I almost screamed.
I pulled back into myself made myself numb.
But the cat, her hand found me and I, the mouse, had no more holes to hide in.
I came to lose myself and for that, I never forgave her.
Glossary. Bueno, alright.
Ranas, frogs.
Llovizna, the rain.
La llovizna, I should say.
Perra, bitch as in female dog.