Rigoberto González (born July 18, 1970) is an American writer and book critic. He is an editor and author of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and bilingual children’s books, and self-identifies in his writing as a gay Chicano. His most recent project is Latino Poetry, a Library of America anthology, which gathers verse that spans from the 17th century to the present day. His memoir What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. He is the 2015 recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle, the 2020 recipient of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, and the 2024 recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Review of Books.
CARDINAL RED
Rigoberto González
Rigoberto González
In love again, I welcome the familiar
high, the dizzying state of detecting
signs around me that the world’s
complicit in my joy. Look, a heart-
shaped bite on my apple. Listen,
my beloved’s favorite song.
Temporarily a country apart,
but instantly closer when his touch,
his scent consumes me, when
something triggers memory of him.
I happen to be looking out
the window when I catch a cardinal
land on the fence and I have to
call it evidence that my beloved’s
also missing me. This glorious bird,
messenger of desire, collapses
distance between separated lovers.
The next day, the cardinal returns
to the same spot and my body spasms
with ecstasy. Don Rojo, I whisper,
christening the emissary who has
flown across the Americas, I hear you
as clearly as I hear my beloved’s
breath, his rapid beating heart
during passion. But on its third visit,
I grow wary: what if I’ve misread
the missive? What if Rojo’s telling me
that my beloved flutters in another’s
arms? That hollow on the bed so easily
filled in by another with a warmer
language in his mouth. By now,
that surrogate no longer a stranger,
but at home inside my beloved’s
abundance of curves and paths—
a roadmap to enticements.
The stupid bird’s chirp taunts me,
mimicking the squeaky mattress
whose rhythm has quickened—proof
my lover moves to melodies more
fiery than mine. Rojo, you sparkler
that tiptoes on the fuse toward
the dynamite, you ember eager
to be first to flee the hungry blaze
and so spread further misery, you
agitator in your traitorous red coat,
ornithologists got it all wrong,
misnaming you cardinal. There’s
zero eminence in slander, even less
in snitching. Buzz off, blood clot.
Take your wretched news with you.
I know better than to trust a bird
to tell me what I’ve known since
my soon-to-be ex mourned the lost
pitiful love note I didn’t write, now
dying of neglect inside my pocket.
====
CARNIVORE
Rigoberto González
Multiple sclerosis is a disease in which the immune system eats away at the exterior covering of nerves.
I’m consuming myself,
my doctor says, and I get
the urge each time I lift
a fork. How it rattles
with anticipation as I aim to
plunge it into the scar
tissue of my chest. No worries.
The heart is not where
the heart should be. Neither
am I. I’m supposed to be
upright and sturdy as a moose.
Better yet, a gazelle. I
used to walk so gracefully,
so elegantly in that animal
me. How my antelope
nose soothed my buck’s
neck before he stotted away,
stomping out my heart
like the last flame before
silence. I’m lonely. This entire
burnt forest has forgotten
my name. I bend to lick
the ash and remember
nothing. Not even the twitch
of my heart once pink and
alive as a nest of hatchlings.
He chewed it off just like
I’m gnawing at the dead
gazelle of me. At night I detect
thumping. Heartbeat or
hoofbeat, I can’t say. It creeps
further away, memory of
a man who once loved me,
hungering for the whole of me.
Oh I used to be more edible
than this. And so mealy.
====
THE LUNA MOTH HAS NO MOUTH
Rigoberto González
All insects have them yet the luna moth leaves
its mouth and the memory of hunger behind
with its caterpillar past. Now it survives by
absorbing moonlight, hence, its name. There’s
so much moon for the nocturnal feasting, we
witness its depletion each month. The moon,
so helpless to the millions of insects that fly
by to take their share of luminescence.
The moon, so large we can see it, even when
we don’t mean to, is also so far away we can’t
hear its cry for help. It’s a silent demise, like
a drop of sweat vanishing on the hot sand.
Ice melting in the embrace of a glass of water.
The luna moth has no mouth, we’re told. But
neither does the moon. It dies of the opposite
of neglect, which is overindulgence, and nary
an utterance of objection from its moon glow.
The moon perishes from too much attention,
such vanity, such self-centeredness. It doesn’t
need a mouth because poets and lovers
are its spokespeople, an entire publicity machine
at its disposal to sing its praises, punch-drunk
and, truth be told, pernicious. Enough already,
babbling bards and lovesick turtledoves, the moon
gets plenty of play. That’s why it keeps coming
back for more. It feeds on flattery the way
the luna moths drink from its arrogant beams.
Maybe we have it all wrong and the moths
are trying to save us susceptible humans from
this prison of codependence: ego enabling ego.
Luna moths, our diminutive heroes on a fool’s
errand, without mouths—or stomachs!—live only
for a week or so, yet spend that precious time
delivering the same unheeded message:
Don’t waste your life on those who
will never love the way you do.
====
THE MORTICIAN’S GODDAUGHTER VERSED IN LUST
Rigoberto González
Just when I had long outgrown those late-night
seizures in my hand, those involuntary impulses
return to make my fingers twitch like the tips of twigs
after the bird leaps off the branch—
what a crafty little devil, bouncing back all
feathered and ticklish, jittery with pleasure
when it finally finds its nest. The sheets become as damp
as the sweaty shirts that cling to the backs of men
at the dance, and how I pity the girls who
undress their lovers before sex.
When I started loving other bodies instead, allowing other
temporary guests to mold their shapes inside my flesh—
a torso of my arm, a shoulder of my mouth, a waist
or a buttock of my leg—I had no need
to concentrate my rapture to a single sticky place
since every movement in my skin was slowing down
inside the vat of honey I was swimming in.
Oh bath with tongue, oh alchemy of heat and bed.
The memory of so much sex enough to keep me sated
in the quieter evenings of my third and final age.
So imagine my surprise when those possessions
from my adolescence woke me up again, but in the guise
of scribbling from my pen. Not fancy or confession
but something in the middle, like the mole that snuggles
in the space between my breasts, that glorious discovery
that makes the men cry out, the women
shudder with anticipation or intent. It’s more like poetry,
because it whistles through the paper like the weekend
afternoons I summoned passersby from behind
the window’s curtain. What wonder to seduce with sound,
granting serendipitous fantasy—here a table
with rotating thighs, there a closet panting with exhaustion,
there the eye of the voyeuristic clock bold and
looking to be satisfied with one pair of feet pointing at
two opposite corners of the room,
three fingers always vanishing inside the cluster of
four hands that motion slowly left, slowly right—
the capricious current of the underwater flower,
five limbs comparing lengths and flexibility,
their competition sabotaged by the arrival of a
sixth contender, seven escalating levels in the throat—
whimper, grunt, moan, sigh,
whine, hum, groan, cry—oh, and if we’re lucky,
thinks the grinning clock, we will spiral up the scale
(and down again) a good
eight times, nine would be too much to ask,
though not impossible since there was once a
record-breaking tenth, remember?
Eleven minutes for a quickie; at least
twelve positions for a marathon. Now why would I write
a thing like that, me who wears a garter belt to church
on Sundays, my best perfume to market,
where tomatoes look as dazed as the tomato seller?
Blame it on my mother’s poor choice for a compadre,
none other than the legendary lover, the mortician,
whom the women always said would have his way
with one, in life or in death—both,
if one was fortunate. And the rumor always was
that he had fathered me, though I never did detect
any resemblance. But what does it matter
anymore? I’ve outlived even the mortician’s crazy
daughter (half-sister, if the hearsay is correct).
If the mortician is my muse, then let him color
every word in ink as dark as pubic hair.
Where to begin? Ah, yes, fittingly, at the little piece
of skin that stimulates imagination:
I’ll compose a poem to the mortician’s scar.
====
ODE TO THE BREAD ROLL
Rigoberto González
Rigoberto González
For Francisco X. Alarcón
Ay, goldo, goldito, goldo
with those sunbathed baby cheeks,
I want to gobble you up in kisses.
Please go on, you tanned flirt,
you ostrich wink,
lying down naked-toned
like a tamale stripped of leaves.
Inch closer to the table, baby,
because my hands long to be
top sheet and pillowcase
to masquerade as your bed
and meld their dreams to yours:
you, reflection of moon over lagoon;
them, parade of heron sticks
that make you jiggle jiggle
like marzipan gelatin.
With you even the soldier
surrenders and shows up to the barracks
firing off foolishness:
Ay, papacito, compact as a brick,
you broke my heart with a single blow. ¡Ajúa!
Ay, chaparrito, I came in one piece
until you scattered me like a jigsaw puzzle. ¡Ajúa!
I who only aimed to be
chief baker,
early rising nightingale,
stood too close to the oven
to romance the bread.
It singed my eyelashes.
It burned me down to poet.
I deliver in a clay tray
what’s left of words
to say—before
my mouth goes dry—
I won’t get jealous
if you run away
with him or them or her.
And if you’re aroused by them,
I won’t ask why.
I only beg that you
remember me, beloved.
And as remembrance
I’ll cherish what you leave me
of the crumbs and crusts.