for Rosendo
You make me vegetable curry
and I am too hungry to taste it.
You love my garden.
I plant a fence.
There are lentils on your shirt.
The untouched roasted garlic
is the moon. The moon is
the unnoticed Gaelic prayer
I whisper when you are sleeping.
Let me be your absentminded
lover, the split wishbone
confusing broke for misery. I sing
in your dreams—Ár n-arán laethuil
tabhair duinn inniu—
and when your hands open,
I look from your emptiness,
everything and too much, half
a fig and you give me more.
I sew poverty to my blouse
and blame you for providing
the thread and needle. You stitch me
a new shirt with pockets full
of cinnamon. I open my lips and your breath
fills me. Tonight it is enough.