The woman who used to be our aunt
—Amid burning dust in Ciudad Juárez
Outside a cinderblock home
Where I had to use the busted toilet—

She & her friends cradled & cooed
Over a lifelike doll of the Christchild.

Inside, the faithful propped
Their relics on a card table,
Went to pray in the corrugated
Shade of the patio.
Came back to blood
Raised from the icons & rosaries.

The second miracle was the dancing sun
—If you stared into it
It would leap & zigzag.
Faith healers wired for sound call the truly

Infirm to rise, & they do.
Language adheres to itself only, yet shrouds
Our littlest gasp.
There are accounts of cousins
Getting laid before the funeral.

There’s our origin before oceans
& our brains that flesh
Out—sniff, peep, tongue, etcetera—

The only world amid
Odd relations & an unstable
Deep star, amid atmospheres
Of absolute dust.

The next miracle made the papers.

___________________________________________

Daniel Luévano’s work recently appeared online with Verse, and more poems will appear soon in The Shattered Wig Review and The Saint Ann’s Review. He lives in Fort Collins, CO, with his wife, daughter and son.

Bright Lights, Big Stage

We’re going to see My Morning Jacket tonight. Not long ago our interstate system made it difficult to see a band we like. See, Charleston, SC is located at the end of one interstate (the east-west 26) and an hour and a half from another (the north-south 95). This is not convenient for a traveling act unless they are from Charleston, which is not your Seattle, Athens or Chapel Hill of music. In the meantime, we read, and, naturally, we come to some links for you, including what NPR is recommending this week. A wrap up of a PEN discussion on women and fiction is next. Random House gives some of the digital rights to William Styron’s works to his family. For the first time on the internet, here is Dennis Dutton and Michael Palencia-Roth’s epic interview with Jorge Luis Borges from 1976. And, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the announcement of cursed W’s memoir. Rock on. – Andrew Geer