THE MIDNIGHT AIR
“The subterranean
beginnings of all light”
—June Jordan
A poet with the name
of a summer month believed
in bodies that stirred up the oceans:
a blind writing
upon the finger’s shore.
Only now,
in the intimate silence
can I finally say your name.
I am only
a floating plant
heaving in the current.
The rocks rub against each other
carving the sand
into a dwindling cave.
I don’t have
a single word of solace
for the dying crowds
that follow
the trajectory of the wave.
Can we only remember
our hands touching as the light
dissolves into the air?
The night is still, I know that you are close
like a thought I put away,
saved for later.
That day has also slipped behind
and I can mourn
what has come back, altered,
a friendly gesture
in a burning hand.
I have weakened, slightly
waiting for the tired tide.
I too, want to rest and remember
and forget
we were once here
waiting uncertain
among the hollow leaves.
A cockroach nestles
somewhere in the room, we all
live accompanied
by our foreign ghosts.
And why then, I wonder
do I see you as a tree
I can rest my head upon?
spreading myself out
like a flowing field
onto a mindless sky.
SOOTHSAYER: Murmurador de Alivio
“Our stories are so holy
we refuse to share them
with non-believers
until we find
those that understand” — Mario Pagán Morales
It will be long before I find the center of the world
the place that opens up
when the eyes shut down
gaze into the internal night.
May we find a place to share the voice
that was denied to us
may we find a prayer that works
a song that heals
the body of the soothsayer.
Our stories are not fully ours
unless we share them.
May we not speak in soliloquy
I do not monologue alone if my tongue
branches out like an ivy
curls into other branches
crawls into ancient forests
where the sound is curled up into itself
guarded by a thin membrane of silence
like a shut-eyed frog
creeping under the leaf
the canopy towering above him
a small brown body
under a layer of soil
Nobody will suppress the deep
croaking of the growing song
rising gradually above the
hum of the ocean
leaking into the rocks
receding
like the song of the coquí in the forest
drawing the ear deep into the eons
behind the green curtain
the blue orb exploding
into the deep abyss of the eye.
Violeta Orozco
Violeta Orozco is the author of three poetry collections: "El cuarto de la luna" (Proyecto Literal 2020), "As Seen By Night/La edad oscura" (Nueva York Poetry Press, forthcoming), "The Broken Woman Diaries" (Andante Books, forthcoming), available for presale https://www.andantebooks.com/store1/The-Broken-Woman-Diaries-p130175617. A bilingual writer and freelance translator from Mexico City, she translates Chicana and Latina writers for Nueva York Poetry Review. A Ph.D. scholar of Chicanx and Latina literature at University of Cincinnati, she seeks to restore the fractured links between the broken bones and languages of the Americas. Her poetry in English has been published or is forthcoming from Acentos Review, Label Me Latina, Harvard College's Palabritas, Bozalta, MALCS journal and Latinx anthologies like Nuestra Realidad Creativa Anthology. She currently lives in Cincinnati.