Enduring Love

Los Carranzistas , Villistas, Colorados .

"We danced with Zapatistas ,

Ay , you know, hija ?

It didn't matter."

Ella discovers, however, that it -- your politics, your sexual orientation, the color of your skin -- does matter in a world where "Righteous White Boyz" take brown-skinned lovers because "they loved the idea of la otra --/dark woman as primal symbol of true courage/and indomitable strength."

Ella runs away from fields and family. She marries young, has a kid, has an affair with a woman, leaves her husband, has other affairs with men and women, supports herself and her son cleaning offices and doing whatever else she has to do. These episodes play out, each episode recalled or evoked, in three-line stanzas that land like perfect little revelations of truth -- "You can forget everything/about your life/when you ride the train" -- or wander off into thickets of myth that leave the reader peering around for some sort of authorial direction back to the story:

She fits now and belongs to nowhere --

ella , who the devil left for dead.

She and I sleep together,

Whether on sacks of wheat or a proper bed.

We sleep the sleep of Xochiquetzal