A poem you are required to love
One of the amazing things about poetry--and why it's good for us fiction writers, too--is how it can be about language. (Some people I know would say that all poetry ever should be "about" is, in fact, language.) As in, the point of a poem is to get you thinking about the precision of words--but also the bleeding boundaries between them. Usually this is by the stress put on each word via the poem's structure, but sometimes even chatty, narrative poems can dig into language.
I got to see Aracelis Girmay read this poem a few years ago at the Indiana University Writers Conference. She's an incredibly dynamic reader, and I wish I could give you a piece of that memory. You have to imagine a lot of quizzical expressions for the first half of the poem and an accelerating exuberance in the last bit.
Also: you are required to love the poem. Otherwise, I don't want to hear from you.
For Estefani Lora, Third Grade, Who Made Me A Card
by Aracelis Girmay
for Estefani Lora, PS 132, Washington Heights
*
Elephant on an orange line, underneath a yellow
circle
meaning sun.
6 green, vertical lines, with color all from
the top
meaning flowers.
*
The first time I peel back the 5 squares of
Scotch tape,
unfold the crooked-crease fold of art class
paper,
I am in my living room.
It is June.
Inside of the card, there is one long word,
& then
Estefani's name:
Loisfoeribari
Estefani Lora
*
Loisfoeribari?
*
Loisfoeribari: The scientific, Latinate way
of saying hibiscus.
*
Loisfoeribari: A direction, as in: Are you
going
North? South? East? West? Loisfoeribari?
*
I try, over & over, to read the word out
loud.
Loisfoeribari. LoISFOeribari.
LoiSFOEribari. LoisFOERibARI.
*
What is this word?
I imagine using it in sentences like,
"Man, I have to go back to the house,
I forgot my Loisfoeribari."
or
"There's nothing better than rain, hot
rain,
open windows with music, & a tall glass
of Loisfoeribari."
or
"How are we getting to Pittsburgh?
Should we drive or take the Loisfoeribari?"
*
I have lived 4 minutes with this word not
knowing
what it means.
*
It is the end of the year. I consider writing
my student,
Estefani Lora, a letter that goes:
To The BRILLIANT Estefani Lora!
Hola, querida, I hope that you are well.
I've
just opened the card that
you made me, and it is beautiful.
I
really love the way you filled the sky with
birds. I believe that
you are chula,
chulita, and super fly! Yes, the card
is beautiful.
I only have one question
for you. What does the word
'Loisfoeribari'
mean?
*
I try the word again.
Loisfoeribari.
Loisfoeribari.
Loisfoeribari.
*
I try the word in Spanish.
Loisfoeribari
Lo-ees-fo-eh-dee-bah-dee
Lo-ees-fo-eh-dee-bah-dee
& then, slowly,
Lo is fo e ri bari
Lo is fo eribari
*
love is for everybody
love is for every every body love
love love everybody love
everybody love love
is love everybody
everybody is love
love love for love
for everybody
for love is everybody
love is forevery
love is forevery body
love love love for body
love body body is love
love is body every body is love
is every love
for every love is love
for love everybody love love
love love for everybody
loveisforeverybody
Aracelis Girmay is a poet and writing teacher living in New York City, This poem is from TEETH, Curbstone Press (www.curbstone.org).
Leftover Halloween Candy (from ten years ago)
When I was searching for a photo of my black-eyed "P" costume, I stumbled across this poem from a college writing class in 2001. It makes me feel really old to think that this was 10 years ago. Anyway, here it is, such as it is.
More important than the quality (or lack there of) of the poem is that working on it--and all the other writing I did for the class--is the fact that this was the beginning of me taking myself seriously as a writer.
That's a treat that hasn't gotten stale, not even after ten years.
Also kind of cool to see that, even then, I was thinking about how immigrants experience America.
Halloween and the Fifth Month
At dusk, autumn’s fingers tug at branches,
Sending the last leaves spiraling to the ground.
Neighbors tell Rosina, recently arrived, that tonight
Children will come knocking for candy.
This is to her empty as the turkey she helped prepare
Last year in Uncle’s home or the other days
With tiny printed names marked off in red on her calendar.
Celebrating what? No one here seems able to say.
Rosina knows only the view from her own front porch,
The things she can touch, name in her own language:
The maple tree shivering, clumps of earth
Along the sidewalk, three figures approaching,
Faces shadowed and green in the streetlight.
The members of this raggedy band—Elvis, a cat, and a beheaded lizard—
Lift their sing-song voices that join on Sundays in chorus, chanting
Words that Rosina cannot make out. She sees instead rows of tiny teeth
Punctuating smooth pink tongues. And then their fists plunge
Into her basket of taffies, which jostles against the early
Rounding of her belly.
She hears the rustle of wrapper against wrapper as candy
Tumbles into their bulging bags. Elvis and the reptile
Scuttle away, but the cat wavers. Her whiskers
Droop from her jowls, and she looks at Rosina who gazes back.
Rosina imagines that the dim confusion on the cat’s face
Mirrors her own (it is, after all, a terrible time to be left alone),
But suddenly the cat pounces and snatches the heavy candy basket.
Her gray tail flops down the steps as she scampers away.
Taffies thud-thud across the path, forming a haphazard constellation
By which Rosina will chart her course.