We moved into a house with 6 rooms: the Bedroom,
the Map Room, the Vegas Room, Cities
in the Flood Plains, the West, & the Room Which Contains All
of Mexico. We honeymooned in the Vegas Room where
lounge acts wasted our precious time. Then there was the junta’s
high command, sick dogs of the Map Room, heel-
prints everywhere, pushing model armies into the unfurnished
West. At night: stories of their abandoned homes in the Cities
in the Flood Plains, how they had loved each other
mercilessly, in rusting cars, until the drive-in went under.
From the Bedroom we called the decorator & demanded
a figurehead . . . the one true diva to be had
in All of Mexico: Maria Felix [star of The Devourer, star
of The Lady General]. Nightly in Vegas, “It’s Not Unusual”
or the Sex Pistols medley. Nothing ever comes back
from the West, it’s a one-way door, a one-shot deal,—
the one room we never slept in together. My wife
wants to rename it The Ugly Truth. I love my wife for her
wonderful, light, creamy, highly reflective skin;
if there’s an illumination from the submerged Cities,
that’s her. She suspects me of certain acts involving Maria Felix,
the gambling debts mount…but when she sends the junta off to Bed
we rendezvous in the Map Room & sprawl across the New World
with our heads to the West. I sing her romantic melodies from the Room
Which Contains All of Mexico, tunes which keep arriving
like heaven, in waves of raw data, & though I wrote
none of the songs myself & can’t pronounce them, these are my
greatest hits