A Poem

Her Spanish, Her Spanish
(Beth Kephart)

I’d held her hand. I’d taken her
up the sun-bleached streets of Anapra,
dust in her lashes like sleep,
her Spanish small so that I leaned
as we walked, closed her hand
more nearly into mine,
as if love were a vigilance.

Dogs in the street,
the scythe of a horse’s teeth,
the wild springs of a deserted mattress
partitioning the bone yards
of squatters, and a doll
sacrificed to tumbleweed.
Her hand in my hand
was the word,
her Spanish, my song.

Later two half-moons of blisters will rise up
from the scuffed plains of her feet —
the white heat of cooking grease
from her mother’s kitchen.
Her suffering the border between us.
her Spanish, her Spanish
and a dog turning in the street,
the clatter of ice.