Calzada de la Virgen

Eternally in
brick and
glass I say
nothing
in spite
of plastic roses
perfuming my
space. The bus
airhorn blasts
early chill noise
doesn’t move
mountains
traffic
Mary. I
disappear around
the corner
into the metro
car I don’t
exit up the
stair I don’t
descend. Can
you see
me still Mary?
Today is
the first
I get to
see my
baby being
treated for
illness. Mary
in black
announces
sadness:
the great
airshipful of
us has
gone down in
a remote
sea. A comma
of a bird
the almost
not-sound
of pause hops
from gas
meter to bench
to tree. Mary
wonders: are
my bleeding and
indigestion
related, are
they signs.
The catcall,
lean, look
cadence
stutters my
steps. Mary and
Mary holding
Mary in my
arms step
onto the
night boat
night after starful
night darkens
the sea we
walk into
seeing through
water lapping
next week’s
shore where
my hands
could hold
my baby
could hold
iron bars
could hold
empty
wrinkled
by sea salt
endless sun rain
wind and no
shore. The
Mary whale
weeps beached
bags bottlecaps
done up
in fishnet
stockinged
belly lung
uterus. This
happens on my
way home:
a man
steps out
of the ivied
wall,
a bee
flies
from my
mouth. I
wonder if
a small votive
of mezcal
might do
the trick might
answer
the three
eagles
screaming
on the air
between
apartment
blocks on
the air at
my ears.
I wade Mark’s
Plaza neither
of us saints
but sacred
scared. I
burn Mary’s
hills trees
grotto wasting
paths passes vistas
of no sky
here where
I lie
with Mary,
in Mary,
Mary. I lie
in your arms
in a dream
of rattlesnake
beneath our steps
beneath brown
leaf cover
of tiger
walking through
our city’s wood
of my diamond
molted skin
trash under the
laurel allée
dividing
this path
in two
furstriped thighs
lifting your
hips when
you walk
over me.
Mary of no
hands perhaps
no arms and
also no
legs I stand
guard above
the bar-
man rows of
glasses
bottles
mirror my
twinkle-light-
haloed head.
Sweeping
down from
the shelf my
mantle
trailing
night’s troths
oaths
debris from
the cantina
return
to my
brick-
columned
glass
box.

Heidi Zeigler, Texas-raised, teaches and writes in Mexico City. Her poems appear and are forthcoming in descant, Nouveau Re:AL, Poetry Is Currency, like a field, Apartment, Harpy Hybrid Review, The Indianapolis Review, and Wild Roof Journal, among others. Her poem “penny oranges” won descant magazine’s 2024 Betsy Colquitt Award and was a Pushcart Prize nominee.