knotted hair, scalps
cracked open like
fresh walnuts, hidden
under a woven sun,
tanned skin sticky
from southern heat,
lime-light resurrecting
the sleeping indigoes,
cupping
their hands and bathing in
the froth of their poverty,
broken language whirling
like static on their tongues,
gummy asphalt bruised
into their own bodies,
their voices laced
with altitude as they
beg the valleys to cave,
so they can bloom their symmetry
upon the badlands.
/before I could speak,
outstretched palms wedded
clay into my skin, suffocating
me beneath a thousand cotton-woods.
Calabria,
but grandmother
hushes me, watching strangers
butcher her hometown in chopped
syllables.
I want to speak to them,
but my city words crumble
beneath abyss heat, like
palaces piling upon ink-torn
paper,
moonlight hovering
between stained glass,
keeping it aglow, melodic
sayings like up the small
church, and I gasp in a silent
revelation,
grandmother’s body
still fumes with fever,
silently heaving from
a solstice season,
she misses home,
her eyes sea-glass
and wistful,
words accented with
rosemary and sage,
we throw upon the land,
their spirit lies beneath
here,
that I know.
