Garcia Lorca Becomes His Own Poem

The red cross on the Sergeant’s lapel,
is a vein in a bull’s neck, quivering.
The sound of the Civil Guards’ rifles,
staggered, blue steel genuflections.
He winced in the headlights, extended his hands
to fend off the bullets.

Four in the morning, in a shallow pit
on the road between Viznar and Alfacar
along side Dioscoro Galindo Gonzales
a lame school teacher,
and two anarchist bullfighters,
a bucket of quick lime as an afterthought.
The Guards picked up their spent cartridges,
flicked their cigarettes at the grave.
Sparks flew as they spit and walked away.
It’s a shallow grave to swim out of, Federico,
white faced and streaked vermilion.
But after the Civil War, in nineteen thirty eight,
in the Tavern of the Green Piano
after hours, when the doors are locked and closed
Manuel Velez will play and sing a Carcelera,
a llanto, the lament of one unjustly imprisoned.
Pastora Pavon, La Nina De Las Peines
“The Girl Of the Combs” will sing Ay Carmela,
how the gypsies pulled Lorca from the shallows
before the quick lime burned his pale skin clean,
his body paltry and undone, the brevity of bone.
They lay him on a cooling board,
washed him with spikenard oil and jasmine.
They placed chips of turquoise on his eyes,
Gypsies in their passion-gardens wove necklaces
of dried marigolds and tiny apples.
they sewed his songs shut in the mouths of lizards,
braided shadows into his hair.

They scattered breadcrumbs and flower seeds,
called the birds, to flutter around his eyes.
They buried him standing upright,
where the willows “grow on the tongues of rivers,”
Down by the cottonwoods,
So his bones would settle to mark
The remote pitch of the starlight,
His green and point blank moon.