Dear Kim Ambriz —

With your mezzotint smile & your seagrass
sway, you shake cocktails & our bodies
with soul that’s your soul too
though an inconsolable vapor
bathes your loosening self —
a Gal Costa album looping
in the background of your body.
Kim Ambriz, where do you go
when sleep is fitful; when the world
appears as a woodcut
— a broken carousel
imprinting itself on sleeping figures
& it seems no mind would bear
but right there where your eyes mythologize,
humming with pearl-light over the dark bar.
How could anyone not be rapt
by your wavelike grace, backlit by mirrors
& orange liqueur? Want to learn
everything about you, your falling horses,
your Aztec codices; what you do
& do not say? What you play that makes
all dance & forget, mute our pain,
filling mouths with fricatives,
reminding us the self is a tender
labyrinth full of palaces
& jazz as your kindness turns sadness
to spangle & we lean to your lunar flame.