my jaws lock in mid-sentence / and hands cover your last white / leg with dirt /                                     i name it / a lighthouse: a jar full of salt:  / a longitude line    undone

Photo credit: Thomas Sayers Ellis

And when she looked at me, her smile / fixed as she said, Yes, that I was beautiful, / too. Even though my eyes were crossed. Even / though my thighs were thick. Even though / my knees held onto the dark

Photo credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

My mother and I met them when they were five, at the intersection of John F. Kennedy / and Abraham Lincoln. / Every time a car stopped at the red light, they washed the front / window for a few pesos. / Over the years, in broken Spanish, they gave us a small piece of / their past—they had crossed the border for work, came from the Artibonite Valley, lived / in a tin house, never had shoes. 

In half light, I come upon the body: slender / Mud brown, shorn scalp, quieted and steady; lifted / From a formalin bath and laid in the cool room /