The death was quick and without warning.
The musician is looking for the woman with a lantern,
the one like a mess in the trees,
the one with a hole in her chest.
She doesn’t answer, and sunlight is just fire.
The moon is wearing a necklace,
and time a hunter. Each brass bullet brings me close
to some things, far from others.
Yes, I am your mother, but I am also
of bird songs, words, and bare,
red sun. I am also lake, dance, delicate
earrings and irises.
I am of the east, which means
broken, which means house made of darkness,
sand and rose and family,
countries cut open like fruit.
Here is the blood and the seed.
Roads and mountains and dark pockets come to me
in the dream. Sky’s warm wave snakes across you.
Wildflowers are buried, wishing to be born.
Atoosa Grey is a poet and singer-songwriter living in Brooklyn, NY. She studied literature in college, and is a current MFA student at The New School. Her poems have previously appeared in Common Ground Review and on The Best American Poetry blog. You can also find her on the playground in Brooklyn with her three-year-old and three-month-old daughters. Visit her website: http://www.atoosa.net.
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