“How ashamed water is to be what you have made it.”
—Conchitina Cruz
this week i was becoming it was the eve of a storm i was forming
into fluid preparing to change state or nation into occupied
land over a crime scene a body of water not over a woman but
oceanic in that way. now i’m new here & no genius but even
i know water is life; what is the harvest of a tank farm? what
grows? nobody deserves this, not even the random ate in
waipahu who told me why can’t you just get over martial
law as if we could have even gotten to find his body or an
ordinary grief. even servants of empire can be my kapwa.
what is a colony against that? what if i got a bottle of pinatubo
water shipped here the same wai that along with lava rushed
down our mountain in grey torrents to turn one US base into
a ruin the other evacuated, tails between its legs? what
if i offered that water to this land in places, bit by
bit, to say: you’re not alone. keep fighting
Copyright © 2024 by Jake Eduardo Vermaas. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 8, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
When I say first time, that implies
there will be a second, a fourth, a ninety-ninth.
From far away our teeth must look like Tic Tacs,
Chiclets, moons of a faraway planet. Nocturnal
animals can smell better at night because scent
lingers when the air is still, and so I smell the mint
of our mouths but also the spill of peppers
from the salsa dropped on your shirt. The greasy
sidewalks we walked an hour earlier. Hotel soap
freshly bubbled and wet in the dish. When I root through
the thicket or the brush pile, my fur turns electric striped
and tail-tumbled. I foam at the mouth. The mask
on my face means bandit. Turns out I love the dark.
My little paws want to grab everything and wash it.
Copyright © 2024 by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 6, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.