Poetry By Ramiro Valdes

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Pores


These pores in my hands
are wells
descending
to the vault of my bones--
a granite cradle
shaped in the womb.
Blood fused into bricks,
cemented with the cigarette ashes
my mother smoked--
still compact inside my ribs.
These teeth, shaped
by milky streams,
rooted in my gums.
My dermis--
her fossilized tears.
I am the Himalayan salt mine
waiting to be undone
into foam and return
to the sea that seasoned me--
now the salt shaker
rusting in her kitchen sink,
scraped by a knife
back onto her tongue.

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Clay

Clay under the scorching sun,
Summer's child,
My feet buried in the sand
like stems in a pot --
brown-nailed,
too rooted.
I am a grave digger
looking for my twin.
Rocks beneath a molten mandarin,
Summer's stillborn,
I rip the bedrock with my canines.
I reach this granite tomb --
My brother tucked
between twin dragon-blood trees,
crimson sap
in a snow sheet,
stillborn,
His green eyes, fireflies
in twin sealed bottles,
swimming in ember,
still but never dead.



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Ramiro Valdes is a poet from Miami whose work has appeared in several literary magazines.