amá, when you were alive, i never once spoke to you in / english. now, ten years after your passing, i think there / are things i would like to say that i’ve never learned / how to say in spanish.

there is bone. a no / flicked off / uncouth grass. tire / body; an itch of restlessness

I’m sitting at this kitchen table, talking / to my father’s father. His tongue tends to get stuck on the / same stories like the trigger of a jammed carbine, coughing on /  things that should’ve passed through like the shape of a life / through wall, but no. His stories bleed together: comrades / fallen in a field far from home. I have their dog tags in pocket, / but I play audience anyway.

She was a ghost from the day she was born. /  Arm & Hammer baking soda. Just a hammer / and a strong arm. Head wasn’t as hard as his. /  The love of him that was hard-headed.