From Causes of Insomnia: "El Chiapero"

For years, the residents of El Chiapero have eaten tamales. The women start by smoothing corn chico – stewed with handshakes of crushed limestone and then dried – into a gritty masa. They move dark ears of rock over the disappearing gold buttons, the kernels growing smaller and smaller until there are no kernels. The black manos and metates are Chiaperoso mortars and pestles.

The men hunt javelinas with handguns and, when grey steam ruffles from the bullet hole, they straddle the struggling pig and slit its throat. From behind, two more men raise the legs of the beast. Its blood spills freely over dry ground. Before gutting the javelina and hoisting it on a spit—ragged wood crackling beneath the sow, skin turning as orange as the coals—hot water is poured over the carcass to depilate the hide.

Later, the masa is folded with lard and spread into cups of corn leaves cradled in hands. A fingerhook’s worth of roast pork is laid on the sheen of corn and rolled between palms, tied at the ends, and steamed in a basket. When the tamales are done, the husks are removed and snowcaps of salt are tossed on. Sprays of limejuice rain down.

The Chiaperosos live in what yorkinos call “mud huts” and, though they can’t tell you why, they spit on cracked ground when they hear the name Cortes. They wear shoes woven from recycled corn husks, the soles carved from mesquite roots, the sides packed with clay and corn silk and straw.

In Chiapero there are no electrical outlets. No running water, no television. No schools or school buses painted the bright and dull yellows of corn. Only a handful of residents know how to read, though they’d never admit it for fear of being called arrogant, or sangron, which means “to have a lot of blood.” To be labeled sangron means risking sharing the fate of the javelina.

It is the worst thing in Chiapero to be a sangron. It is the best thing to have sturdy shoes and warm tamale.

From Causes of Insomnia: "Within the First Five Minutes"

It wasn’t the worst date she’d ever been on. She might still go home with him. It had been a while since someone asked her out and even longer since she’d gone home with anyone. He was weird, there was no denying that. But maybe she’d go home with him yet. You never know.

“What are your interests?” she asked, prodding her fork into the bed of salad greens, hoping the evening might take a turn toward the better.

So far he’d told her he didn’t fold laundry, he hung up everything, even his socks. He’d told her how when he was younger he was turned on by ladles. He’d told her he didn’t know the order of the months until sophomore year of college.

“Sorry?” he said, raising his eyes from the soup, through which he was distractedly dragging a spoon.

“What are your interests?”

He weighed his answer. “Wheat,” he said stoically.

She frowned. “Anything else?” Just say something, she thought, say something so I know you’re not a psycho.

“Shaving.”

*

Later, she was amazed how smooth his cheeks felt between her thighs.

From Causes of Insomnia: "Adam"

I’ve never understood the phrase, “I don’t know you from Adam.” In a crowded room, say at a party or a gallery opening (the type of event where people say idiotic things like “His sculptures are so post-modern” or “Her work really speaks to me”) Adam would be pretty easy to nail down. Nakedness aside, he’d be the guy at the bar who orders a drink the bartender has never heard of, or the guy who says to the artist whose work is on display, “Hi, Dabney, I’m Adam. I’m sorry, but I have to say, you don’t really look like a Dabney. You look more like a…Grover. Don’t you think? Guys, doesn’t he look more like a Grover? Anyway, Grover, when I look at your paintings I think, ‘These aren’t paintings. These are paintings about painting.”
At this is the point in the evening, I would leave the gallery and go home, home to my books and my sofa, home to my chairs and my bourbon, I would go home and marvel at the things people say.

From Causes of Insomnia: "Café Introductions"

Man: Hello.

Woman: Oh. Hello.

Man: Would you mind if I shared this table with you?

Woman: I’d rather you didn’t. I’m expecting someone.

Man: But I’m famous.

Woman: You don’t look famous.

Man: That’s only because you don’t know who I am.

From Causes of Insomnia: "Hiking Alone"

Stanton feels vigorous. Healthy. Hydrated. No aches, no pains. He feared his knee might give him a little trouble – the metal pin in it occasionally sticks – but so far the joint has felt nothing but loose. He’s limber all over. He feels alive, the way the sweat rolls down his back. And yet…

It makes him uneasy, there being so many vultures overhead.

Poem: Ear

as with the machinery of grammar
ignorant of names
he uses the parts of hearing blindly
[promont, concha, cartilage of pinna…
giving sound to ideas
elated and imaginative
deafening him to the bullhorns of traffic
the stampede of oncoming chrome

a rosy mist spackles the air
a brief spray of matter
floats between silhouette buildings
like tomatoes swapped for clay pigeons
mass transit strikes him
high and low like a tympani
the blunt force pushing itself
from one side of his face
to the other
barreling through
barreling through
barreling through
the inner ear

[the accidental bus
gags on the chipped tooth of third gear
and halts with the tight whiny
of colts on hot reins…

don’t call it irony
that his hand clutches the winning numbers
[5, 11, 29…
don’t call it fate or due
his bloodied head and the ticket are not contracted
to mean what they mean together
the lucky earn their good fortune
just as heroes earn the rite to pass long and slow
to keep soiled rags red
while the aqueductus fallopi
fires and fires and fires
until all loud luck has rung out