Angela Narciso Torres

If you go to bed hungry, your soul will get up and steal cold rice from the pot.
Stop playing with fire before the moon rises or you'll pee in your sleep.

Sweeping the floor after dark sweeps wealth and good fortune out the door.
Fork dropped: a gentleman will visit. Spoon: a bashful lady.

Bathing after you've cooked over a hot stove makes the veins swell.
For safe passage to the guest who leaves mid-meal: turn your plate.

The adage goes: coffee stunts growth. Twelve grapes on New Year's: the opposite.
Advice from the learned: hide a book under your pillow. Never step on. Never drop.

Every rice grain that remains on your plate you'll meet again on the footpath
to heaven. You'll have to stoop to pick each one of them up.
...

Carpenter ants picked the T-bone clean.

The dog's leash tautened toward
a square of sun.

A hallway lamp wavered.

Slice of lit motes through
the cracked bedroom door.

Her slipper under the bed, another on the armchair.

On the shell comb, a single strand.
Her blue robe still damp.



*



a narrow bed in an endless
row of beds tucked tight
like chalk-white pills
cocooned in plastic

no visitors no cellphone no
end to night but the nurse
who relayed messages
telegraphic—send blue

bathrobe Saint Jude
rosary lime-flavored
Jell-O chenille slippers
boar bristle brush



*



why am I here?

pressed in her suitcase
between terrycloth and silk

where is my husband?

on a prescription slip, scribbled
in her physician scrawl

when will I go home?

barely three days before
the words slowed to a trickle
...

Something of late November
sifting through a window
brings back this prelude—

two voices blend, I lean
into the keys, draw back
when the voices part.

How the body remembers—
Señora V in a floral sundress,
rose talcum hand soft

on the curve of my spine
imprinting what she knew
of love and time. How could I know

what those notes would mean
decades of preludes ahead.
...

Suddenly, rain. Our heads
bowed together like monks
in this hot green place.

I study the slow script
of her movements. The cross
and uncross of her legs,

fingers forking together,
pulling apart. Secret dialect
of her face—a firefly flick

in the iris, lips curling
like kelp. Speak, mother.
Your daughter is listening
...