Sports & Outdoor Activities

we are taught the beauty of the rose
the serenity of the soft and the still
the austerity of silver stars…

There is a framed photograph of my grandmother
She is a young woman, sitting on a horse, vestida de china…

I am a feminist who loves my sport
and the machismo in charrería often gets to me

To be clear
I am not …

Brother charro
do you realize
that it is because of escaramuza
that you have an audience?

Our performances…

they announce us      Valentina Covarrubias montada en Viento
my girl does not cower           does not wave or smile…

No
I don’t dance horses
I am not a mariachi
I am not a baile folklorico dancer
I am not the half-time show…

The migration continues. Continuous. Sporadic. 
With mathematical complexity, wind 
over sand 
 *
Ropes …

Blood-gushered mountainside a brass parapegma of noon
glares behind: gore of hides. Beasts all slain. Shadeless midday. Specterless
differentiation. Glad day zodiacs augur. Awl of insight; hunters'
blades. Actaeon: and the spirits of motion. Actaeon
uttering:...

& I immediately think of Cheryl, her Malik, his beloved
obsession with the team’s orange & blue, a sunset…

1.
After the beginning of the gallop, there are counts when the horse is in the air, her
legs withdrawn, a diamond shape.

This is called suspension.

2.
Her name is Sallie Gardner.

She’s by Vandal, out of Charlotte Thompson, Kentucky bred, of Irish pedigree, a
Birdcatcher.

Now...

In springtime, chief of all seasons,
        in May when new joys rise and flourish,
                the sun is lord and messenger at once and sends down to us
        to rouse our bodies and be merry:
humankind to...

In this life, there are stars
and there are stunt doubles.

Before I became one of those fathers
obsessed with memorizing his lines,
making peace with the Big Director
in the sky who doesn’t like ad libs,
before all that, I was the star
of my own...

Rinsing the sea salt out of our bikinis
with the drinking water and getting a slap
upside the head from your mother with her
House & Garden magazine reserved especially
for fanning away mosquitoes and sighing
because we know that this is how
it’s always going...

200 cows         more than 600 hilly acres

            property would have been even larger
had J not sold 66 acres to DuPont for
                waste from its Washington Works factory
where J was employed        
       ...

Water

Cold as it sounds

A stream in a forest and a boy fishing,
heart aflame, head hush, tasting the world—
lick and pant. The Holy Scripture
is animal not book.
I should know, I have smoked
the soul of God, psalm burning
between fingers on an African afternoon.
And how is...

The strongest boy in our high school
on the edge of Detroit did not play
sports—he would’ve had to cut
his long blond Samson hair
and put away his switchblade
and stop smoking dope.

The gone-to-seed coaches who taught
gym class hated him for the beauty
they could...