Artemio Rodriguez and Rigoberto González

The Artist                                           The Poet

Artemio Rodriguez                            Rigoberto González

"Que Culpa Tengo Yo De Ser Tan Guapo"

2005

Woodcut, 19.25" x 25"

Papi Love

If Papi stops loving me, I’ll look for a man who acts

like a man, who opens his brown heart like

a wallet in public places, who burns slowly as a

cigarette in bed, who is unafraid to intoxicate

with his ash—a brave man, thick-nostriled, scarred,

whose only unused muscle is his inhibition. Show me

a man who can’t hold back from plunging his fingers

into his lover’s flesh and you’ve shown me a man

who can lick his hands clean of my sweat and

blood. I want to stay so pure, so elemental, so

mattered—a property essential as air

that practices its warm seductions in the lung.

Give me a man who describes my every crease and mole and

knuckle, and I have a man who can cradle my entire

body in his mouth. I need that god, that judge, that

father who hugs me like the son he never wanted

to give up, who wants me back inside his womb, unborn,

undressed across the sheets that helped conceive me.

A man made me a man and only a man

can hurt me, unlocking my lips from the

copper nub of his nipple, withholding the milky

dish of his hand from my thirst. A selfish man

becomes barren and chokes on his own white dust.

A man generous as a church is going to be

my man, my give-it-to-me-till-it-doesn’t-hurt

Papi, sideburns graying to an overcast sky, groin flash-

ing with lightning, hairy chin that tickles down my back

like rain. Ask me who loves me and I’ll tell you

who I am: I am the keystone held intact by the arc

of his arms, I am the texture that exists at the command of

his touch, the scent of pressed carnations dead

until it comes alive beneath his nose. I am

that shadow of a man. It’s because he steps into the sun

that I am. It’s because he breathes that I have

breath. It’s because I wake up in the morning

with the wide clock of my face still beautiful

and ticking that I know I’m worth a man.

If Papi stops loving me he can’t be that man

and I’ll kick the tired animals of his hands

off my path. If Papi stops loving me he never was

a man. Without me he’ll never be a man because I am

what makes a man a man.