Henry Oso Quintero is a very mean man. He likes guns. He lives alone a ranch outside of Tyrone, NM. He eats rabbit, and snake and horse meat regularly... Or so the Hollywood version of Henry's life would go. In reality Henry is a native New Mexican, from a generation of landed, college educated mestizos who annually reclaim their ancestral lands through rituals of poetry and song.

    opening febrile opening again apocryphal mirror

    we are inside no harm

    will come traipsing

    her golden hairs engagingly provocative inseminate

    the opening again penetrate the sacred space of her

    Never the midnight vibrates until a wine glass
    breaks. The train twists
    off track. Unslaked, mistaken claims
    flash the cabin like a camera. The future maims

        "Age is a short word for a long sag,"
        she spat. Then sat in still birth sigh,
        an envelope with wetted chin,
        as words just fit because they do,
        twist a stanza to its close.
        Her hair, a thick mosquito net,

        Familiar with this fallen moon,
        I ask you point cold blank:
        "Do you drink every night?"
        An answer, the hangnail of silence,
        bleeding color, forming crust.
        Conversation peeling back
        as if it hit pedestrians,

        On the lower slopes
        Dogwoods glow like cold bone
        Redbuds add their insistence on color
        But no heat
        Above them poplars risk their foliage
        Without thought, as if April never lied
        While oaks leave almost nothing to the frost

    We envied you then
    Even after hearing the old black men in white shirts
    Cough into the whiteness of linen handkerchiefs
    Time and time again

        It is night
        Shade has escaped from the corners of buildings
        And from the leaves of trees
        Congealing in blackness
        Too thick to be cut by street lights or neo

    The black wind of March awakens me
    Not the bright and powerless sun
    Or the persistent song of the mockingbird
    Guarding a nest still empty
    Or rather a nesting place
    With only the anticipation of twigs and straw

The meditating man leaps up from his spot and yells, "piss on it!"
The Nuns are benumbed, but act in accordance with the Prefect's wishes and dispose of the meditating man's spot. Colors blur from the eyes of the meditating man, creating a sulfuric mist, difficult to drive through and