1316 Summit Ave.

Outside your Jersey window black sparrows
sing at the chance-medley on the bed below the portrait

of Sylvia Plath painted by your ex-husband
from Rotterdam. Once, our bodies intertwined

like two ballet dancers, our jumps a Changement de pieds
like channels of water rushing over a bed. A river.

A creek. A stream. A dry river                                  Bed.
Now we are working all night long on our oases

in the desert, each of us burnt from the chanting sun
and one-hundred-degree days. Over the Hudson we once saw

a supermoon, the closest we will ever be in elliptical orbit
with the moon, earth, and each other. A chantepleure on the 95

to the city. Outside your living room sliding doors I stare
at the chapter-house attached to the monastery of the Blue

Nuns and wonder who was buried there. The grass
around the house so barren, not even a wild blackberry.

So many prayers said aloud like poems to each other
in our warm fire-placed poetry shack. Ashes on the floor. Ashes

in the air. Ashes in our throat and blood. Ashes, and a small
fire still kept alive. I write this poem with charcoal on the walls

of your kitchen to chariot, to charity, to charm, to claim
a love I will not let die. Want another

cigarette? If lovers smoke together is that cigarette heart?
Can I call you ciggy? A lover’s name. Or should I call us culinary?

Lovers who cut out each other’s hearts,
butter and garlic on the hand.



Xavier Cavazos is a grand slam champion of the NuYoRican Poets Cafe. He is the author of three collections: Barbarian at the Gate, Diamond Grove Slave Tree, and The Devil’s Workshop (Editor’s Choice Award from Cleveland State University Poetry Center). Cavazos is a senior poetry editor for Poetry Northwest and directs the Liberal Studies Program at Central Washington University.