2 Poems by Alexandra Lytton Regalado

Hacer de Tripas Corazón 

With lines by Ranier Maria Rilke and Joy Harjo

For beauty is nothing 

…………….but the beginning of terror,

is what you must’ve thought 

…………….when you arrived at the high desert.

Sleeping alone beneath a tarp,

…………….your breath cut with cactus blooms & thistle.

The counselors showed you how to saw branches

…………….of juniper & sagebrush to build your pack,

how to whittle a spoon & spindle for fire-making,

…………….to trek the miles of eleven weeks.

Often a star was waiting / For you to notice it.

…………….At home the bluebottle flies still trapped

in your bedroom, highest corner of our house.

…………….The flies pitch headfirst into glass,

urging me out of sleep.

…………….As a child you’d appear at our bedside asking

please kill the fly humming & buzzing me awake.

…………….You’d once seen a fly birthing maggots 

on your bedspread; nightmares for years. 

…………….We’d snap the hand towel at the ceiling

until the fly landed stunned,

…………….dead on the tiles, then flush it down the toilet

& everyone back to bed. Now, years later,

…………….a wind full of infinite space gnawing at our faces.

You, in the high desert, 

…………….where wilderness not only means survival,

but “adventure therapy, resilience for troubled teens”—

…………….we did the right thing, the counselors say,

hay que hacer de tripas corazón, los abuelos say,

…………….while I try to fashion a heart from my tangle of guts—

you spend afternoons catching flies between your palms;

…………….the flies fat & lazy from heat,

eeven they must submit

…………….& you pinch off their wings & they are reduced

to ground insects, your pets.

…………….Stubbing flies, you wrote in your letters, 

the way I’d seen my father put out a cigarette,

…………….orange ember pressed to glass until it gives

.& folds in on itself. The fire you, my son, struggled

…………….to make—I closed my eyes & saw your hands rubbing

the spindle back & forth, twisting it into the groove 

…………….of the board, the toprock tight in your hand, 

again & again you faltered & it fell apart.

…………….For any spark to make a song 

it must be transformed under pressure.

…………….De tripas corazón, you kept trying & weeks later—

unspeakable need, muscle of belief—

…………….the rubbing of your hands produced a coal;

you learned to make a nest of juniper bark,

…………….small hairs concentrated in the center,

you placed the coal in the heart of the nest,

…………….brought it close to your lips & blew, waving 

.the flames alive, the snap of green wood resisting.

What My Father Taught Me About Time Travel 

I want to need to repeat you again 

& you need to leave

so emptied you cannot fill

the bowl-headed sky, the antiseptic clouds

burning white. I’m playing with 

a cat’s dead bird—who knows

what skull & crossbones I can

release to this world.

I can feel the quivering of your body,

the heaviness I’m causing. I want to leave

& so you leave, feet buried in the sand, head in hands,

unrecognizable statue. The sea unfolds &

the sky moves closer. We stand exposed

like lightning rods, then glass.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado is author of Matria, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). She is a CantoMundo fellow, winner of the Coniston Prize, and her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Academy of American Poets, Narrative, Gulf Coast, and Creative Nonfiction among others. Co-founder of Kalina press, Alexandra is author, editor, and/or translator of more than fifteen Central American-themed books. www.alexandralyttonregalado.com 

13 September 2021