Once, buying a pair of kitten-
heeled pumps as a gift for my mother
(she'd walked past the store window
more than once to admire them), my
father tucked a peso bill into each
toe box. Though I didn't quite
understand how this rendered the gift,
even if gift, more than just a thing-
transaction, I knew he believed in
the power of symbols—how they
scatter potency through life in the guise
of ordinary things, then transform
into meaning. Each new year's eve,
he'd wear the same yellow silk
shirt with orange dots, circles
being the sign for wealth and luck.
Every surface could be an augur,
a token of the future, a foreboding:
warts on a finger, the shell
discarded by a cicada like a coat;
fish scales refracting light
like a prism or a disco ball.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
