To Shelter Itself and, Sheltered, to Conceal Itself
By Gina Franco
What looks the ghosts have thirsted for, what love
they conceal
in their deep pails carried up the stairs
and emptied into the fire,
themselves air poured into fire,
far from what they do not know
they expect: to be
returned to time,
this time. To be allowed to make a real
point. To take staff in hand
and draw the line
that parts the water that drives the path that delivers the promise:
to land
a plot-shaped spot to seat myself and my other things above
all else, and to end—
(the life where the man who was
our father throws the woman who was our mother
over the fence and dumps her there where she drifts unconscious
in time and we stand, dispossessed, outside our own
house,
where the sprinklers, the wet green yard, hold the rear window,
hold so the light sets alight what little a little eye
apprehends)
Notes:
This poem is part of the portfolio “The Chorus These Poets Create: Twenty Years of Letras Latinas.” You can read the rest of the portfolio in the December 2024 issue.
Source: Poetry (December 2024)