The ribbon is orange, tied noose-like
a party ribbon that once prettied
our birthday presents.
 
And my cat can’t get enough of it
as she tries again and again
sometimes missing it entirely 
biting the air, her blind eyes wide
open, triumphant, when her teeth 
capture the bow at last.
 
The vet assistant talked about shaving 
part of her fur on one leg so a port 
can be fitted more easily under her skin.
 
I wonder if her port will feel like mine. 
My breast cancer, her lymphoma
is something we experience together.
She will not know how it feels
to die of cancer. I can spare her
that knowledge if the doctor 
can cleanly inject the lethal dose
that will send her to empyrean*.
 
But for now my Persian is playing 
as I recite poetry and shake this ribbon.
How have I pet thee? Let me count the ways. 
I hold her close, she licks my finger as I say 
one more Good Morrow to her waking soul, 
‘til it’s time to let her go.
 
*Empyrean relates to the highest heaven and was believed to contain pure light or fire.
                        

—on viewing an exhibit of photos of the Sistine Chapel
 
Of all the paintings Michelangelo
created for the Sistine Chapel,
none move me like this woman.
 
Not Eve reaching for the apple
from a life-like serpent, nor the lightning 
touch of God during the Creation of Adam.
 
She is wearing a long strapless orange dress,
this Libyan Sibyl, the last of the seers created 
on the north side of the chapel’s fresco.
 
I, too, wore a strapless dress 20 years ago
on my wedding day. But compared to her,
my arms and neck are weak, undeveloped.
 
She is lifting behind her a huge book. 
She looks backwards over her powerful
shoulder, while gazing in another direction.
 
Will she reach into her giant book to proclaim
an oracle? I am praying to this erudite woman
to divine my future, to say if I will survive cancer. 
 
Soon I will weep like Jeremiah with his long white
beard, bright orange cloak. Perhaps it will be for joy,
like David upon slaying Goliath. Or will it be because
 
of my expulsion from Paradise? Will I be one of the chosen?
Or instead condemned to private darkness, the shadow side 
of God’s miraculous separation of Light from Dark.
                        

—with references to “Songs” by Frederico Garcia Lorca
 
The taxi drivers know this city by its plazas.
They measure distance not in kilometers,
but by cobblestone bricks, Hapsburg kings
and queens, Bourbon princes. They tear
through Madrid with blood in their hearts,
fuming the air as money dirties the city.
 
And I am walking with olives in my pocket,
dreaming about princes and Cordova.
 
Hundreds of years ago, the plazas were 
a meeting place for auto de fé, the burning
of the body during the Spanish Inquisition.
 
So many paintings of martyred, tortured
saints line the Museo del Prada: The Annunciation,
The Crucified Christ, Saint Dominic of Guzmán,
The Adoration of the Shepherds.
 
I think of Lorca, his books burned in Granada’s
Plaza del Carmen, all banned in Franco’s Spain. 
 
Lorca wrote about Cordova, far and lonely,
before Franco’s soldiers battered his body 
with rifle butts, then riddled it with bullets.
To this day nobody knows where his remains lie.
 
So many pigeons line this plaza, strutting
like common peasants, pecking at bread, 
pulling at crumbs from foreigners. 
 
And death is watching for me.
Estoy llorando para ti, Frederico.
Like you, I’ll never reach Cordova.