El Lector Key West Your father tells lies about how it began, your father tells it that he was El Lector . He walked the aisles of immigrants, their hands browned and fists sore, to stand above them on la tribuna , in the smoke, revered. He read Cervantes emphatic with gesture, his Castilian brought life to La Voz de la Suciedad . You''re as certain this isn''t the truth as your father''s certain it is. In your version, your great-grandfather comes from Cuba and he is merely one of those cigar rollers. But narrative is all that''s left, so much of where you were born only exists in folktale. The pattern of barreling down to build more and higher has made a mass-produced tropic of your birthplace and exiled to memory all that is native, your legacy an oral lore, a telephone-game mythology. The only truth you know is that you are confined to this island, set in the coral stone of your birth.

The past only foretells when read backward. So I listen to you tell me your story in circles, a curse our children will inherit: their chronicle a catacomb that can''t be unearthed. The Dangers of Touching The guide warns us against the dangers of touching the cave''s stalactites growing in underground dark, longer with the seeping water, almost as if it would be soft if you touch it, blooming cotton ready to fall in. The cave''s stalactites growing in underground dark take us home, to where the reef''s delicate coral dies if you touch it, blooming cotton ready to fall in, inside itself, the oils of your palm poison to the sea-forest. Take us home, to where the reef''s delicate coral dies and we''re powerless and we''re tempted to push the earth inside itself, the oils of your palm poison to the sea-forest and to cave teeth. We go into our room instead, and we''re powerless and we''re tempted to push the earth with our bodies, our palms pressed to our skin, the sea-forest and the cave teeth come into our room instead, where we ignore the warning against the dangers of touching. Our Life a Stereoscope Because of you, I am dying. Like the rat our landlord is poisoning to make us feel more comfortable where we sleep at night, my days are numbered.

I know it more each night I try to sleep on your rising, falling chest. When you search my eyes I see reflected in them two long, shining caskets. These tiny pictures have grown clearer the longer I''ve let myself look, our life a stereoscope, the other slides changing as quickly as you blink, the back- drops shifting to sun-heat, to yellow leaves before I can focus clearly, before I can make out the shapes of our bodies clinging more tightly to one another, until there is nothing to hold, nothing to touch, nothing to see but the long box on the frozen ground. You''re explaining how the bait works inside the small body of our house rat, how he''ll bleed, and I stop you. I already know. Big Pine Key State Prison The day before our wedding, we decided to break into the prison after reading a headline that it had been shuttered, the men emptied from cells, the halls filled by the kind of quiet and echo you could almost touch. You pried where a board looked loose, your knuckles scraped and bled where you pushed inside. Getting in was the hardest part.

There were no heavy bars in the hallways, only doors, left open forever, the inside becoming freer than the outside had been. We whispered - afraid even the emptiness would hear us - about how boundaries work both ways, letting someone in so easily confused with locking someone inside. We shouted to hear who was louder, how our voices blended in the air then were gone. The floors weren''t concrete and stained with the memory of bodies, as I expected, but artifacts made nests in the corners of each room, what had been taped in front of beds and hidden inside books we rummaged through. I found a sketch of a snow-scape and some glossy prints torn from the wall: a family in the sunshine. I imagined them on a farm, wide open space. We couldn''t tell by looking which one was the prisoner but we each guessed, deciding finally he may not be in there at all. When I suggested we go to Vegas for our honeymoon, this is what I had in mind.

He scrolls photographs of giant arrows and bigger-than-life sized cowboys, lightbulbs bulging from their ten-gallon hats and stars and sunbursts poking the ground with points that once poked the sky. People envisioned stars once upon a time and they all saw them so fascinatingly differently. The grounded STARDUST and JACKPOT make us reconsider what it is to really win something, what it is to want to touch something you can''t so badly that you settle for its dust. This graveyard of lightbulbs and steel, dark, yes, but ready and willing to light up. The rough edges do not scare us, we prefer the rubble of what once was to glory. When we arrive, we will sleep on the ground under teepees made by old signs promising the chance of fortune. We will hold each other so tightly despite the desert heat, and we will know that right now it is all hope, and along the way we will shine and we will deceive, and we will not become one when we become dust, but here, at the beginning, you can hardly see the end for the glare.