October
where three we-horses mark ground,
turn snake our necks inside the guayla circle. My aranci,
—etan, childfox
out my fourth mouth, you drank
then the year went dark
& our own flowers & fires & what we thought we were
though, still, our faces opened to
the whooping of coyotes
at the canyon rim,
how they throw their voices out,
falling, starless veils of lace
over our still, black heads.
Awake I sit sentried with all my Sight
& the purple fennel musting after rain.
This hour
Become my canyon, become my bottom of the world
listening for your breaths—to ward off nonbreath.
Parent, my son—My son,
a flicker barely
born. Already
withstand the blanched eye of our grief
One morning with our faces crying into
the arroyo it answers:
Once there were no doors.
No doors on earth, not a single one.
—so when I listen I
still hear you still kicking the ball,
laughing as you say the story of endurance.
& the women flutter their flickering tongues
a flock of sound suddenly aflight to be,
for you, both here & further
they throw their voicebirds over the births
so we are three & simultaneous earths inside
your coil of fatherhair to which I press my ear to hear
the histories, then the bell
Then the whirl The whir
of doctors above your beds,
your noiseless struggle to be.
Stay. Say.
You are my Heres & Furthers
Daddy, now I join the mothers
Remember, when you were a little boy
I used to hold you?
Copyright © 2018 Aracelis Girmay. Used with permission of the author.
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