Vol 1 No 1 2007
Green Parasol
Sweet blossom of hair and flesh
fourteen years ago you tore me up so swift.
They set you blue, bawling to my left breast.
Later I fit you hungry still
between elbow and wrist,
dreamt us rib to rib
in the chiselled ivory box
your great grandmother
bore north over red hills
as part of her wedding dowry.
***
In the studio on 61st I watch your sharp torque
of groin and thigh, a dancer’s labor
toes strung to the polished floor
knees flounced in precise piroutte.
Later you hunch in your room
scrawling hot alphabets
in the margins of
Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Home work done
you’re Instant Messaging your friends
chat of the latest rap
or boyband, or bandana.
***
You’re quiet now.
Here take this gift
strip off the worn silk
tear the cloudy tissue paper.
Its all I have
this moist quilt work
of rooms and balconies
continents torn
tampered with
bloodthirsty.
***
My love, my little phoenix
your mother the old nest is quite undone.
Soar over the Bronx river,
set fire to old straw,
light up the broken avenues of desire.
Then be a girl like any other.
In soft mist, in flowering sunlight
at the rim of stone gates
raise a green parasol
under a green tree.
–For Svati Mariam in the year 2000–
Meena Alexander