My parents gave birth to a wooden cart when
they lived in El Paso, Texas.
 
Do you think a woman can catch
conception from the hands of artesans?
 
The way that young brides hold on to
grains of rice in their hair?
 
My father had a tendency to talk about
children and children and children.
 
No wonder strangers were throwing wheat
and corn and birth at my mother since
before an agreement to marriage.
 
I think a seed, the promise of a harvest,
can curse the sow for something else.
 
I wonder what their lives would have been
like if they had stayed, lime green and fuchsia
textiles.
 
Maybe me, a happier thing, had I been a
cloth-woven doll painted in añil.