Book Review: Aracelis Girmay's Teeth - Page 5

//-->to try to open every one of my windows, I cannot
imagine the intimacy with which
a life leaves its body, even then,
in detonation, when the skull is burst,
& the body’s country of indivisible organs
flames into the everything. & even in
that quick departure as the life rushes on,
headlong or backwards, there must, must
be some singing as the hand waves “be well”
to its other hand, goodbye;
& the ear belongs to the field now.
& we cannot separate the roof from the heart
from the trees that were there, standing.
& so it is, when I say “night,”
it is your name I am calling,
when I say “field,”
your thousand, thousand names,
your million names.

IN THE CANE FIELDS

You are a steel-blade woman,
I am a steel-blade man.
When we dance like this,
head-high in the cane,
my heart beats red with want.

It’s a dangerous taste
gonna swing me from some hanging tree.

I am a steel-blade woman.
You are a steel-blade man.

If the Boss Men follow
down the dirt red road,
accuse us of blackness &  of love,
let us live again, sweet,
come back & haunt these fields.

FOR ESTEFANI LORA, THIRD GRADE, WHO MADE ME A CARD
for Estefani Lora, PS 132, Washington Heights

*
Elephant on an orange line, underneath a yellow circle
meaning sun.
6 green, vertical lines, with color all from the top
meaning flowers.

*
The first time I peel back the 5 squares of Scotch tape,
unfold the crooked-crease fold of art class paper,
I am in my living room.

It is June.
Inside of the card, there is one long word, & then
Estefani’s name:

Loisfoeribari

Estefani Lora

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Loisfoeribari?

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Loisfoeribari: The scientific, Latinate way of saying hibiscus.

*
Loisforeribari: A direction, as in: Are you going