When I rose into the cradle
of my mother’s mind, she was but
a girl, fighting her sisters
over a flimsy doll. It’s easy
to forget how noiseless I could be
spying from behind my mother’s eyes
as her mother, bulging with a baby,
a real-life Tiny Tears, eclipsed
the doorway with a moon. We all
fell silent. My mother soothed the torn
rag against her chest and caressed
its stringy hair. Even before the divergence
of girl from woman, woman from mother,
I was there: quiet as a vein, quick
as hot, brimming tears. In the decades
before my birthday, years before
my mother’s first blood, I was already
prized. Hers was a hunger
that mattered, though sometimes
she forgot and I dreamed the dream
of orange trees then startled awake
days or hours later. I could’ve been
almost anyone. Before I was a daughter,
I was a son, honeycomb clenching
the O of my mouth. I was a mother—
my own—nursing a beginning.
Copyright © 2019 by Ama Codjoe. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 2, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
I've been fighting a War Within Myself all my life,
Tired of the hurt, the pain, the strife.
Anger consumes me from day to day,
Cellies now walking on eggshells, unsure of what to say.
I do pray each night for the peace that I need in my heart,
I need it before I tear what friendships I have apart.
Prison has a funny way of doing some things,
Leaves me wondering what tomorrow may bring.
I'm tired of the hate, anger and pain that I feel,
I just want my heart and soul to be healed.
I want to be able to simply laugh at a joke,
I need someone to help me before I lose all hope.
My heart is almost completely hardened with what I've been through,
I need someone, anyone, maybe that someone is you.
I'm fighting a War Within Myself, and I'm so tired,
So nervous, scared, like I'm on a high tight wire.
I hope that I don't fall before someone catches me,
But then again... maybe it's my destiny.
Copyright © 2019 by Daniel K. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 20, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Translated from Portuguese by Dan Hanrahan I know you by your scent, by your clothes, by your cars, by your rings and, of course, by your love of money. By your love of money that some distant ancestor left you as inheritance. I know you by your scent. I know you by your scent and by the dollar signs that embellish your eyes that hardly blink for your love of money. For your love of money and all that negates life: the asylum, the cell, the border. I know you by your scent. I know you by the scent of pestilence and horror that spreads wherever you go —I know you by your love of money. Under your love of money, God is a father so cheap he charges for his miracles. I know you by your scent. I know you by the scent, of sulfur, which you can’t mask which clings to all that you touch for the love of money. For your love of money, you respond with loathing to a smile, to pleasure, to poetry. I know you by your scent. I know you by your scent. Smell one of you and I’ve smelled all of you who survive only by your love of money. For the love of money, you turn even your own daughters to hard currency, to pure gold. I know you by your scent. I know you by your scent. I know you by the stench of your rotting corpse that somehow walks for its love of money.
Originally published in the December 2018 issue of Words Without Borders. © Ricardo Aleixo. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2018 by Dan Hanrahan. All rights reserved.