Cama

ANNUNCIATION

by Alejandra Cabezas & Gionni Ponce

The emptiness in this house

stings—a wire brush drumstick

tap.tap. tap. ta.tapping

a snare morphs into gunshots

before the white hot of a television

refusing a station.

Like an antenna, I pick up

all the noise. Tonight, most of all:

a parade of rubber soles,

and our children, smothered

into assonance.

Fourth of July firecrackers

remind me of eating candy

on the roof of my abuela’s house

while primos play with

what can blow off hands.

There is an echo to the sound —

a whisper disguised as shock.

Somewhere in a star-spangled bar,

a woman presses her hand

into my growing beer-belly

and I burp into her mouth.

Because all children

are born from foam,

I call this act: conception.

But I do not want to call

my daughter’s new toy:

a bubble gun

pues, maquina de burbujas

trans/lation

Not all guns are pistols but

all guns are pistolas.

I never knew the word

ametralladora before yesterday —

sugar-coated pebbling of my tongue.

God, too, is a mouthful

but I have mastered

the inconspicuous chew.

There is no language in which we need

the ka-ta-trak of machine guns,

but the body is an in-between channel.

Because I know God to be a voyeur,

I am sure he owns a TV.

Bullets like skyholes:

To be shot is to taste the light.