LatinosUSA

Shakers & Movers

Their belt-tightening sexuality,

Shakers shaking nothing, drove them

to orgiastic fervor in church,

leaving their sweet arias behind the barn.

They didn’t get past the nineteenth century.


No t-shirt popping movers here,

no tensed biceps, washboard abs,

sweaty brows, orgasmic grimaces

of moving, down and upstairs,

in and out of the back of the rental truck.


It’s down to me, box on box on box.

Opening the archives of cardboard.

A musty back-and-forth procession.

Penitent enthralled with the ripping chorus

of strapping tape.


Staring into the corrugated church of the void:

dishes wrapped in towels,

hair dye swaddled in shirts,

jarred spices rolled in panties,

enraptured congregations of this and that.


Boxed: proclivities toward inadequate sums.

Boxed: provinces of knick-knacked memories.

Boxed: a provisory proxemics two thousand miles long.

Boxed: lesser hallelujahs

Boxed: proverbs from the sea