About sweeping the floor.

Mexican women are compelling, and never more so,
Goddess help me, than when sweeping the floor.
I have friends who come over and we sweep together.

I sweep a la saxona, grudgingly. As if
I don't want to disturb anything, shake anything loose, make work for myself. They laugh.
I try to imitate their gestures, and I'm getting better.

Ana wears a new black teeshirt with red and turquoise letters spelling out Jesus Christ.
When Ana sweeps she puts her whole body in it.
She has the hi-gloss thinness of a beauty queen.

Teté sweeps in a little mother manner. She is also hi-gloss and lovely,
but she looks like she should be wearing white gloves. She is, in fact, wearing nylons
and a floral skirt and high heeled shoes and babyfat to protect her.

Yesterday we started outdoors and swept up
all the fallen guavas and leaves and twigs and dirt
and threw them into the river bed. "pure fruit and leaves," says Ana.

we shook the guava tree and picked up all the guavas
that fell. We swept under the tree again, and out to the lime trees
and avacados. The grass was clean now. The dirt was clean.

Then Ana swept the long porch. Tarantela. Raise dust.
sweep toward the open end of the porch: send that dirt scurrying.
Teté coolly swept up behind her. I moved furniture.

The inside rooms we swept last, towards the center, bent,
with bent knees, brushing out the corners as we went around.
The broom held away from the body. a trance of rhythmic

sweeping gave way then to the slowest widest sweeps
of long wet whips of cotton and water; cooling mopping.
and the ultimate scrubbing of mops in a rough stone sink