three bombardments

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Text:

I gather the words like / blooms. / I gather the words. Like shards / of / a missile. I gather the words like / my / grandmother. My grandmother is / shards / of a missile. The missile becomes / the shards / of a grandmother. The words / are a grandmother, / blooming with missiles, her garden / an anger of light, / light, an inevitable meteor. I forgot / to accept defeat. / I forgot to bow down like a bloom in / the face of a missile. Like / a missile in the face of my grandmother. / She houses hard towers, / roses pulled by the fist from her garden— / shot from the mouth of a soldier, / a missile of heroic griefs. A tiny respect for / breathing, sheer inevitability of / starlight, even there behind / a missile’s smoke. I gather / the grief-like bloom(s). / I put it back in a garden of skin and / angers. They are all / that is left of my grandmother. / My grandmother: petty / thief. Stealing her homeland in / fistfuls of roses. / The tiny crusts of rock she spreads / in her garden / as if she can fence in her want, live to express / it in the voice of / her grandchildren. / I gather defeat. I gather the petty thieves of starlight. / I put them back in the skin of my grandmother. / When we scatter her, roses bloom. / I forgot to / accept this. As prophecy. / That nothing dead is totally / so. / A / grandmother lives vibrant as a meteor, / anger / as a homeland— / a skin / on the face of her / children’s children: / tiny shards stories they never got to steal / from us.

Read more from Issue 23.1.