in the country coming to an end:
by Giovannai Rosa
my lover’s hands
tracing the goldenrod bloom
the fullness of her dark lips
laughing her father’s laugh
splitting the room, the old lake
dancing, strummed slow
by the gravity, the wind
cool across my belly
freshwater, a little god
all my dead people’s hands
have dipped inside
the river plants swaying
atop the silt, watching
their dark patterns
their muffled language
inside my body
i find my mother
and begin to beg
greedy and asking
for more stories
my knuckles grazing
the tips of her teeth
taking food out her mouth
this obsession to know
to step inside the past
a carcass we pull over our skin
an animal, our want
yes, i learned helplessness
from my blood
the ringing bell of desire
in my body, my people
populated to purgatory
my people between
disappearance and duplication
i make the pilgrimage to answer this
a gator gutted beneath the palms
a little miracle to decompose
doesn’t that belong to me
plastic riding the water
an infinite body
dividing to smallness
carried in our lungs
our guts, the old rocks
below the ocean
the old rocks
atop the mountain
it’s already done
we’ll be outlived
by the undead we’ve made
tracing the goldenrod bloom
the fullness of her dark lips
laughing her father’s laugh
splitting the room, the old lake
dancing, strummed slow
by the gravity, the wind
cool across my belly
freshwater, a little god
all my dead people’s hands
have dipped inside
the river plants swaying
atop the silt, watching
their dark patterns
their muffled language
inside my body
i find my mother
and begin to beg
greedy and asking
for more stories
my knuckles grazing
the tips of her teeth
taking food out her mouth
this obsession to know
to step inside the past
a carcass we pull over our skin
an animal, our want
yes, i learned helplessness
from my blood
the ringing bell of desire
in my body, my people
populated to purgatory
my people between
disappearance and duplication
i make the pilgrimage to answer this
a gator gutted beneath the palms
a little miracle to decompose
doesn’t that belong to me
plastic riding the water
an infinite body
dividing to smallness
carried in our lungs
our guts, the old rocks
below the ocean
the old rocks
atop the mountain
it’s already done
we’ll be outlived
by the undead we’ve made
Giovannai Rosa is a writer, editor, and artist from Miami. They’re the winner of the 2022 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Award in poetry, the 2023 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, and has work housed in Oxford American, The Offing, and more. They’re a 2022 Periplus Fellow, a 2023 Tin House Scholar, and an inaugural Tin House Reading Fellow. They're pursuing their MFA as Kelly Miller Fellow in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Find them at giovarosa.com