Poetry

I split myself into halves/then halves again. An egg split open/creasing yolk, rolling smaller spheres/all yellow inside.

pulp. peel my skin,
spice, fry. bones
crushed, tasted.
swallow my tongue.

I told you, “no es importante”
I laid your head on my chest
told you, “escucha”
escucha la lengua de mi corazón

I recite prayers and my ancestors respond, there is no good, no evil only sand where language fragments and clumps when salt rushes to meet it

Saving these children / means leaving their grandmother / to be swallowed by bullets and a lake

When your hand slit open on the metal edge of a
bulletin board, you kept it to yourself, embarrassed by your ordinary
humanness dripping onto the library carpet.

Today I think about all the / immigrants lost to the sea, / to the whirlwind of loss that / engulfs everywhere in this / land where there are open graves / for our dead.

Who are you, device for my undoing, mechanism of my mania unfolding?