There is a way to love like this—
in exile, my own homeland, grandmother’s body
lost to me
by borders
my taxes paid
to keep the enemy away.
And yet I love every body of water,
the bright sun on the river near Albany.
I love my grandmother’s home,
the old land, and this new one.
When I was a child she sped us up and down
like a race car driver over those old roads
by the Catskill Mountains. Took me to Frog Pond,
where we watched leaves turn across the state,
minnows and tadpoles growing,
and listened late to the peepers.
If I could hear your heart:
drum rhythm, final song,
the way you held onto your last breath
in that hospital bed in New York.
They said you were dying years ago
and the hospice began—
everyone forgot about you,
except Elaine from Brazil
and Maria from Mexico.
When I phoned they knew me by name, knew our stories,
loved you to completion.
All these roads that lead to the new world.
You stopped making Yorkshire pudding
and went to the convenience store round the corner
to buy bread.
Even when your hair was gone, your eyes were still clear—
that sparkle that was beyond homeland, country,
and even this body.
I remember pissing on the carpet in your house,
when you told me I was bad
for needing what I needed.
Remember when I drove to the Cleveland Clinic
and waited while they operated,
my heart begging for you to accept me,
the way my body
loved women.
You told me how when children were born
the doctor would choose the sex
and that’s why some people were lesbians.
But you weren’t afraid of men:
all those gay dancers from when Peter
was in the New York City ballet
and that man that lay on the bed, dying,
when I was seven—you laid compresses
on his stigmata, at the time before
everyone knew what caused the plague.
Bravely, you kept him in your house, and tended to him,
massaging his atrophied muscles
like Jesus.
When I get home, I will light a candle
I bought in El Paso, with the Virgin Mary,
and dream of the day—
when my body is not separate from yours,
and all our history does not send us to death
but gives us eternal breath;
those of us who walked past the barbed wire
to where the wild things are.
