The Nightingale

A nightingale
alighted in my hand,
slipped through my ribs
and built a nest there.
I fed it honey and laughter;
he sang me to sleep and filled my dreams
with treetops and twilight skies.

Last night he brushed my cheek with a wingtip
when he took flight.
I held my hand there
as I bid him goodbye.



-03.15.14

Ceremonials (i)

I walked into a fire pit,
it melted my hard edges.

I shimmered golden,
pulsed like a supernova,
died like a star and was
reborn,
pulsating, pulsating.

I danced, a flame-child
closer to your blaze,
let it touch me, ooh baby
you couldn't burn me.

I walked into the fire pit
and it melted my hard edges,

thawed my heart,
at last.

In my country

In my country,
there is a wilderness that
moans
under the fog
as it settles
in the valley
between intimacy
and
soft thighs.

dream sequence (ii)

last night in between the hours of moonlight and birdsong,

i rested my soul in the space between your smile and your cheek.

curled my entire body right into it,
fit like a dream.

Parting prayer

Your lips part like cemetery gates;
I hesitate,
bow my head and whisper prayers
for every soul that has pressed against your mouth
and left, breathing.

I want to step inside,
bury myself under an evergreen,
feed you for a century
or more.

Lovesong of a Curandera

The lovesong of a curandera

drips like nectar from her lips.

I want to kiss her on the mouth

that sings my soul to peace,

licks my wounds, and

heals the rifts in my psyche.

I want to take her hands

and place them around my heart,

beg her to sculpt and stitch it

whole again.

Sometimes all she does is listen,

watches my tears

and says

Look, mija. The ocean comes for you.

It takes the pebbles under your feet

and rolls them smooth

for you

to pick the prettiest and wear around your neck

or to throw back into the blue.

Espéra, strange and beautiful one.

and that will be all the hope I need

to breathe a little deeper,

throw open my soul

and dream again.

---

With love, to my curanderas and curanderos. 

Dada

A colorful life,

a brilliant spiral downward. 

They fall like kings.

Like leaves off a tree.

We sat side by side

looking straight ahead,

my arm around my father's shoulders,

my other hand in my mother's. 

I thought, this is my family,

silent and distant,

wound tightly together by blood and time.

My grandfather was laid to rest across the sea.

The last patriarch.

Headmaster Mostafa.

The village elder.

He sat down and never stood up,

mid-prayer, late eighties. 

Lived through three nations on the same land,

died a Bangladeshi man.

He would ask me to speak to him in English,

but I never knew what to say.

I didn't much know what to say in my broken Bangla either.

Language, a generation, an ocean between us.

I wanted to say I love you, Dada

but I knew the words would echo strangely,

foreign.

Family love is felt, seldom spoken.

For my grandfather,

it was in the way he let me sit by him

and laughed

as I braided his long beard.