The theater of night / by Alberto Ríos

Northern desert towns in the turn of the old century -- The mermaid comb -- Clemente, in love, speaks to himself in the mirror -- The pomegranate and the big crowd -- I heard him with my back -- Mesquite coyotes -- Clemente's red horse -- A chance witnessing of the morning animal -- They said I was a crying bride -- The river was their honeymoon -- A marrow of water -- The light brown map -- My husband Clemente -- The songs of his hands -- Aunt Matilde's story of the big day -- Santa Teresa in Nogales -- What he does to me -- Who had been friendly now strangers and hard work -- The blurred woman in the photography -- Noise from the sea -- The kitchen talk of comadres regarding a certain problem -- Explaining a husband -- Good manners -- The donkey men of Sonora in the 1930s -- Her secret love, whispered late in her years -- Daily dog -- The dreams that cried -- People here since before time -- The chair she sits in -- My ears get bigger from listening -- Later, when she was like she was -- Having forgotten about eating -- A song of the old days -- Clemente's wife -- Chance meeting of two men -- The conversation of old husbands -- The old man Clemente prays, talking to his wife even still -- No instructions for men like him -- The green that call a person to it -- What abides -- The white -- The theater of night -- Great-grandmothers, neatly starched -- The cures of green and night -- Coffee in the afternoon -- Clemente and Ventura show themselves, if just for a moment, in their son -- Two and a half men -- The drive-in of the small animals.