Carlos Reyes
Seeing
            
         When I look in the mirror
         all I see is time
 
                   ––Mario Benedetti
 
She said I always go
for guys with blue eyes.

 
I never noticed
that my eyes were blue
 
never saw any color in them,
saw like Benedetti only time.
 
Now I see blue, walk out
into the world, my vision clean.
 
No more clogged tear ducts.
Me. The world. All there is.
 
Rubbing the sleep
away
 
I open block-light drapes
face the atomic sun,
 
the blue, an azure sky
not found in nature,
 
a blackness that turned
grey, turned from grey to light.
 
I ask where I’ve been
and do not answer yet.
 
Yet. I am not ready
for someone else’s vision of my life
 
Though I see clearly
through window panes.
 
I dissemble then
answer them at last
 
My life, I made it up.
I made it up so real
 
I can’t unmake it,
nor do I care to...
 
You can take me, or leave me
my flamboyant auto-
 
graph bigger than my ego,
bigger than the moon.
 
 


Hearing
 

He can’t hear the crystal
tinkle of finger cymbals,
imagines no belly dancing.
 
Seldom can he hear
the birds that wake the day
but the alarm clock is loud
 
enough, the jets across
the zenith of the sky,
the cars in the street,
 
dogs barking, cats
he hears, and the wind
singing a song perhaps. . .
 
The refrigerator’s motor
in the kitchen clear, the ringing
swirl of tinnitus, too.
 
He hears your voice as well,
if you call him sweetly
longingly. . .   say you love him
 
and. . .  say it twice.




Autobiography

 
The small tan spot
on my upper right arm
 
I was almost sure
was from a spider bite.
 
I could imagine skin dis-
coloring, a stain spread
 
from a black widow
bite in Panamá,
 
maybe an agitated spider
in my own bedroom.
 
By now the spot is large,
a dream island
 
in the Caribbean, but alas
the doctor insists
 
it is no more than an age spot
albeit a rather large one.
 
Another doctor insists
that a piece of metal
 
embedded in my knee 
is a projectile,
 
though I was never shot
that I know of.
 
Are you sure? he asks.
In fact, “the bullet” is
 
the most abiding mystery
of my autobiography
 
and the favorite myth
about me, a plant
 
I tend with care
in the garden
 
of an ordinary life.