Poetry Thursday - double

I had the privilege of hearing these two poets read last week... I think it was last week, the days run together ... in any case, great stuff.

ENJOY!

Forgiveness
~Christopher Soto
                  for Dad

I’m writing you
            10 years later
     & 2,000 miles
                     Away from
     Our silence
My mouth a cave
                That had collapsed
         I’m writing
 While you
You wear the
                  Hospital gown &
          count failures
Such as the body’s
Inability to rise
           I see your fingers
Fumbling in the
       Pillbox     as if
           Earthquakes are in
Your hands
             I think it’s time
For us to  abandon
Our cruelties
          For us to speak
So     s    o    f    t
We’re barely
                  Human.


Skin-Light
 ~Natalie Diaz
My whole life I have obeyed it—
            its every hunting. I move beneath it
            as a jaguar moves, in the dark-
                          liquid blading of shoulder.
The opened-gold field and glide of the hand,
            light-fruited, and scythe-lit.
I have come to this god-made place—
           Teotlachco, the ball court—
           because the light called: lightwards!
                        and dwells here, Lamp-land.   
           We touch the ball of light
           to one another—split bodies stroked bright—
                        desire-knocked.
                                    Light reshapes my lover’s elbow,
           a brass whistle.
I put my mouth there—mercy-luxed, and come, we both,
           to light. It streams me.
           A rush of scorpions—
                        fast-light. A lash of breath—
                                    god-maker.
           Light horizons her hip—springs an ocelot
           cut of chalcedony and magnetite.
                       Hip, limestone and cliffed,
slopes like light into her thigh—light-box, skin-bound.
           Wind shakes the calabash,
           disrupts the light to ripple—light-struck,
                       then scatter.
This is the war I was born toward, her skin,
           its lake-glint. I desire—I thirst—
           to be filled—light-well.
The light throbs everything, and songs
           against her body, girdling the knee bone.
           Our bodies—light-harnessed, light-thrashed.
                       The bruising: bilirubin bloom,
                                    violet.
A work of all good yokes—blood-light—
           to make us think the pain is ours
           to keep, light-trapped, lanterned.
                       I asked for it. I own it—
                                    lightmonger.
I am light now, or on the side of light—
           light-head, light-trophied.
           Light-wracked and light-gone.

           Still, the sweet maize—an eruption
           of light, or its feast,
                       from the stalk
                                    of my lover’s throat.
And I, light-eater, light-loving.