Transplant

In the back alleys of Salamanca,
a stray dog knocked out my knees,
and I fell
into a sticky puddle,
smacked skull on
golden stone.
Suddenly

I spoke fluent Castilian
and could meld into crowds.
I was domestically foreign.
No eyes lingered
as they had before. I was rich
with the history of the Mariquelo,
the family blessed/cursed
to make music from the highest tower

just because of a Portuguese earthquake.
My voice, the call of a canary,
became master of trills and fricatives,
became yet another miracle

to a historied dogma. The smack
of my head that day echoed
through the old town
for three hours, reverberated
through the cathedral’s copper-studded bell.

It was an injury I passed out from
later that same day, just after twilight
near the hidden university frog. One moment,

fluent words streaming like melted
ice through my teeth
welcomed into Spanish ears
like a cool glass of gazpacho. Next,
nothing but nauseous black.

The doctors said
I was lucky to survive,
that they’d never seen hemorrhaging
so fully clotted
that the blood became a new organ.

And now, after I’ve recovered, I’ve lost
my Spanish, I’ve lost that tenuous
connection I’d made
to these Iberian roots deep
as spinal cords, deep
as the chords pounding
out of the cathedral’s two organs
and spilling into the street,

Latin kyries in a Castilian town. The audience
smiles pleasantly. They clap
at the end without conviction,
not fully hearing
the slurs and lethargic melodies,
never really understanding
but nodding politely anyway.