Nina Hermosa Poem by Robert Rorabeck

We’ve made our decisions and
Sent ourselves out,
And we are hunting for the humid purchases
Off the salts of our high schools:
Girls there, yes—
Like the little brown girl who comes to see me
Every early morning—
Nina Hermosa, in brown skin and tulips
And the temper of a maelstrom flooding a desert:
Had to watch her making out with an eighteen year old
Freshman all of my first year,
But now she loves me in bits and pieces,
Like the kaleidoscope of memory of the monarch
Butterfly flooding and returning to the jungled mountains
Of her Mexico—
She doesn’t appreciate these thoughts:
She doesn’t even realize them,
And it is a good thing as well that my wife only speaks
Broken English,
For it allows me to get away for a little while
Haunted by the things I shouldn’t
And I am not supposed to believe in.