miami pastoral
BY GIOVANNAI ROSA
Click here to read “miami pastoral”
a body in motion remains in motion
BY GIOVANNAI ROSA
Click here to read “a body in motion remains in motion”
i wanted to be a filmmaker before i realized how many people i had to talk to
BY GIOVANNAI ROSA
spring warped the train window:
a wetland beginning to green;
headless trees slanting
like bones out the brown muck.
i’m thinking of being sliced open
in a hospital; my unfinished language;
the promise of a fertility clinic;
my lips warm at the ridge of your
knuckles; a kiss pushed
into the heat of your palm.
in life, i was looking for the texture
film brought; in the memory,
i was quiet through winter,
longing beneath the catalpa
the red maple and honey locusts
dark and nude. i was
missing the green with nausea.
like that too, my body;
like that too, i entered emptiness,
not as beautiful as i’d hoped,
just loud, my sequined jacket
scattering the light. pain
swimming beneath the waist.
said nothing for months.
i hadn’t been to the doctor since i was a child.
when i went they charged me $2000
to practice being wrong.
i ignore the bill like i was taught,
quiet as light, a muted tv moving
with color, the door shaking from
the landlord’s fist. i now know
what has happened inside me.
today, i’m disgusted by cement,
trash and metal, a black fence
holding back a scrapyard.
and still, glory: two fawns
splitting the paled cattail
to reach the trout lily,
feasting to fill a hunger,
eager, ephemeral, the pollen
dusting their pink tongues.
i like to imagine the earth
before boats—six hundred years worth of green.
someone saying i love you.
something that cannot fit in language.
spring shattering out the dead wood.
my first memory was fear.
how do i explain this out loud
