THREE POEMS

Blank Chapel or, Consuelo’s Mistake

The empty doorway cried escape to her
by name, so she took the invitation
to step in, unwrap the rain from her face

& wait for the storm to pay its sudden visit.
But seeing the vandalized walls, a message

started then smeared, the mad steering
of a hand thru paint– to Consuelo the ruined

whitewash was blindness smeared into sight.
A rage she shouldn’t have recognized, the one
house of God she shouldn’t have rushed into.

Floors recently laid down, walls primed just
the day before. With the bust of Malverde
set to arrive with the front door

that afternoon. Nothing to stop her from
getting closer, tasting, first with her finger,

the glimmer in the grit. Nobody to keep her
from gliding her tongue across the wall, deciding
salt from the moon– what rushed leaves

& laughter up the ladder of her spine, & no one
with her in the silence after someone cleared
their throat. When at once, she knew the mud

her bare feet dragged, the shawl she let fall
on the floor, that she would be pulled out
by much more than her hair, turning

to find the faces, like a firing squad armed
with blanks, with blame, with stares.

[Sixty eight were found without heads]

Sixty eight were found without heads,
feet, or hands, making the road a land

of tail lights, flames for miles blown out
after those of us driving, fed up, abandoned

our minds for the Ferris wheel horizon
above lots & tents. Consuelo woke up

that day to billboards, advertised promises
to dump rival cartels & their families

where their bodies would best decorate
the ground. Sumidero’s plaza brimmed

with hissed thoughts & gossip, bitterness
of why & who to blame, flooding

the monument whose folded arms became
pathetically symbolic of the State.

And just as demands to topple the statue
came to a boil, the morgue-bound

procession of those bodies made everyone
step aside & pause. This is how Consuelo

& I met. Of all the drivers who gave up
getting to the other side of their lives

that night, I was the only one dancing
after satisfying a terrrible need

to vandalize something in an unfinished
church with a few cans of paint God

must have left sealed for me. Consuelo
the impossible stranger, who took my arm,

told me have respect. But underneath
wanted to know how I could be

celebrating despite those bodies in black
plastic bags making their way through.

 Missing (Consuelo’s list)

The sunlight we caught like water
in our palms, splashing signals to each other
from pocket mirrors– where did it go?

One beat hello, two beats I’ll be naked
& waiting. The kisses that kept our lips
burning, the night a pair of swings

waited in the weather of a sparkless yard,
the house no one owned or looked at.
Even in the deepest dark the unleashed

laughter, getting home to raise a window
& sleep to wind shampooing the heads
of trees. The sex invented for the occasion

of a lake. When did flames leap into the lap
of those branches, when did neighborhoods
disappear like people inside imposters­–

we once knew. Battles worth coming out
alive from, roosters that pecked for seeds
in our footsteps. Now we can’t know

what crime made that go missing, what
sleep evened us out. The deer that stared
into our bedrooms dissolved into what

night, answered whose call behind the necks
of trees that never let them come back?
Even nights of recent rain, oil-stain

streets where we watched ourselves walk
upside down for hours. Even in broad daylight
the river of shadows cast down, wings

that swept the daydream away from
our hearts– those birds found a hole
in the sky where? And what about

the flashing scales of fish we once found
startled on the dock, like coins trying
to flip themselves back into water.

__

Mike Soto’s poems have recently appeared in The Iowa Review, Hot Metal Bridge, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Rust + Moth. He received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and currently lives in Dallas, TX. To find more of his work visit his website at mikesoto.com.