A Retrograde
She crept into my room, took me outside into the mosquito night thick with the gutted hums
of fishermen’s wives, piercing the flesh of a sleep walking sky.
She taught me that cobwebs are hammocks for spirits, a stop along the way to rest their weary
skins, a knot on the thread of their pilgrimage to a place they had almost touched once.
In those days, a village could grow legs. Wedge itself deep into the throat of mountains
where horses couldn’t smell it, where footsteps couldn’t sear its memory onto
peeling roads.
Dear mama: Dear mama: |
The orchids have teeth the machetes are ornaments rusting upon the walls. I want to build you a temple of teeth but my hands are too tender my hands are for stringing the rice grains of rosaries. On the ocean roams a shadow of splinters the fish are hurling themselves onto the shore the shore will break into birds of dust the scales are mirrors blinding the sun. On the ocean roams a shadow of splinters how will I swim to you when the day is done? |
by Desiree Bailey
Desiree Bailey hails from Trinidad & Tobago and Queens, NY. She has received fellowships from Princeton in Africa, The Norman Mailer Center and Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and is a recipient of the Poets & Writers 2013 Amy Award. She is currently the fiction editor at Kinfolks Quarterly and an MFA Fiction candidate at Brown University.