ni un más día

your fingers circle the neck of the black vihuela            
sounding the chords of your parents’ graveyard  
dug for you in the rooms of their house          
          
they beckon you to lie down with them  
to take up the chorus they sowed in you          
you sing their dead to your fiesta of the unliving          
          
your caressing stanzas fix with familiar claws          
even as your open legs display their sacrificial dance  
spilling in melodies of your despair, I have no existence  
          
I cannot regale in these serapes of bleached bones            
set tables among the monuments with spoils from the graves          
strap on the skull face while on the stage you sing my beauty            
          
not one more day of holding up corpses as your guests          
dancing los voladores as the death verses chill your heart            
ni un más día de los muertos, not one more day  
          
remain in this tomb lamenting the comfort of its cold misery            
in warm light, I will find my place among the living            
singing hymns of embracing and desire, I will be no longer yours