Nothing lingers on the lips like a death song, my mother says, while shredding cassavaand invoking the spirits— Celia Cruz José Martí—or singing blood verse, a church lady working the line, refugee intake.Celia rolling pride through a gapin her teeth, a cry that is palm tree splitmiddle-of-night lightning,and my mother, hands full of seashell witchcraft,hands …
To understand what it would be like to remove my clothesas painters do in portraits of themselves I imagine I’m the woman who knows her body no longer belongs to the young artistwho painted herself before she had children, before her topography was changedby forces erosive as water and wind, and yet she goes on …
I hear a voice from the mountain.I hear words in trees, wild flowers speaking softly, summer remembering winter,the moon hiding in the forest. Someone running, not my brother, not the moon swimming in the lake, not the lake breathing in the trees. A moth clings to my hair.Stars open windows in the trees.I have seen …
name is a windy thing quiet down a hall leaks through hinges does it want to be caught?I don’t know, tipped fangs, fire-points— want to be caught?I think people bundle a name with them from place to place in a basement, a bottleof winda bottle of turn-it-overI have so much holler in me
Gam said you’ll talksomeday, you’ll tell your own hi girl, hi spoon, my ear saidwhere is your applesaucea thumb knowsbye, tell the door for the step hi, that lift-footGam’s sheeny dress setting me on the grass blades bounce under my legssquirrels chuckle with each what-I-want
I will be gone soon, and with me, summer. These warm breezes fleeting; the beauty I have is the beauty of all things that disappearbefore you know you’ll miss them.Each mood—sultry and scorching, mild and balmy— changeable as the rise of the moon’s face,one moment blue over cornfields, anotherorange over the treetops, or red dropping …
It’s been years, now, since she left and even still he sleeps on just half the bed. After all,it really is easier to make that way, quickerto hide all evidence of dreaming, like souvenirshastily put back up on the shelf. He has become the tenant of fractioned closets, of half-portionedrecipes, of refracted light. He sometimes …
What was done was done in our names; we ourselveswould never have done what was done to anyone.We wanted to be good, polite, obedient, fun,wanted only not to ever ask What have we done?And yet, in our names, what was done was done.
Our reaping hours are wintering behind us now.Neurons nowa thicket of blank gestures. Torpor now.Cold now dropping its deep auger.We lowour heads down. We conserve memories ofonce-clotted rivers to dampenour dreams. Reamsof wrecked light where once we were sharpened.Outside,wasps are loaded in their nests.This dormancy is open ended. This slog has worn us out. Time …
From the barber’s chair, I watch the same view: photographs of shirtless studs, Angelo in younger days hula dancing, my hair in the mirror that Angelo makes, for a time, less rinsed in gray. After a trim and the day’s first gossip, he always turns the topic to Pierre, handsome neighbor who vanished to Palm …