My father’s turn for Sundayschool unearthed
In tender minds the same way as a newborn
Full-breath, how fear could molt a ripened fruit
for squeezing like a heart to taint to taste to rule
And juice, mingled with the old pages splayed
My father’s gospel was beating drums.
To scare the devil with hot fruit fire and
His phobias, with stone bodies flexed
And I did, I smelled citrus in the cemetery.
Strung like beads of light amidst the graves
We did not wake the rocks with laughter
They’d think our feet were thunder.
Month: August 2018
I molded a clay and left it a chunk in the amazonian sun.
Like in my lips, fissures formed a root canal or network of bones
connecting all the capillaries of the new skin to the shed with a
strange sympathy, I crack open a thick fruit, glistening a
breathtaking idea, with a jolted heartbeat, cleansing of my
old skin and sins so that I am birthed through this fruit and the dirt
at once and burst but not quite, something close to burst.
You are beyond intrigue, luminescent when you fill a room.
I adore the flip of your feathery hair, the chestnut glow, your essence
I am filled with light and softness
Your laugh is the very meaning of joy.
I appreciate your nose. Your jaw, your shape, the way you light up and crinkle under your own smile, shyly, boldly, blushing.
I am here I am back in NYC again.
I woke this day to the release of bus exhaust
and toddler cries, amazed that I slept, batted
a beam of squeezed city sun from my eye and sat up.
It’s time I was a reliable conductor of
these cascading passengers named each
different types of anxieties one by one
by one thousand if the train leaves the
station too early or uptown rather
than down leaving the cavity
of my wordless mouth in its place
before I can step onto the platform
the brainpan vacated like-
Until you’ve slept on river rocks alone
Or worn a dying shroud of ants like lace
You’ve loosed your cold water skin from the bone
Clutched your self closed curled down, chanting grace
To the ancestors in your wounds who drink
The screams of nations for their strength, wipe the
Red from your mouth like a honeybee, gorged
On the ember of the salt and burn.
But a flick,
And their drums clamoring up,
Ashes to ancestry
Descendants to dust.
Ana Celeste Poetry 