ISSUE: Spring 2021
How long I’ve dreamt of you, teenaged and long-legged, lying on our porch,
your mud-speckled sandals kicked off to the side, watching a tree slowly split
in half during a summer storm smelling of good metals, of you holding your
soupy breath when each split-end hair shatters open, the wood shining like
a beaver pelt in rain, of you wishing the wind would just take it all, of you
saying, Won’t it take it all? of your long, wet hair like squid-ink pasta tentacled
with mine, my gray strands like salted sardines delicious with pickled mustard
greens, for I am on this porch and writing poems for you, thinking about how
my mother’s hair winds around mine like corridors of the heart, her wavy, thick
hair like lasagna noodles we learned to layer in Jersey, our strands entangled
in a messy kiss of lineage, her hair still so black it makes bats jealous, flapping
their wings in pitch-black prayer, of you tilting your head, saying, That is really
strange, and what is so strange about the three of us lounging in the damp after-
storm, for my mother is also on the porch, the freckles on her cheeks constellating
with pearlescent dew, telling you about purple sweet potatoes, her favorite and
so must be mine and so must be yours, steam rising from the oven like a dragon’s
plum-crested breath, how velvet they are, of the earth’s remarkable ways, of you
saying, Can we have some soon, of how long I’ve dreamt of the three of us, great swans
cuddled on a porch, the ancient fans of our mouths feathering because we can.
