Brenda Delfino

since I walked this barren ground.

By robbing I don’t mean

permanent state powers

but more or less how this sorrow is borrowed.

Y mis hijas? the ones I’ve yet to have,

they live between the desire of my breasts and

a future I cannot promise them to have.

My tears are named after a woman whose cupped palms held

fresh water for all her animals to drink, how she pulled from

the inside well of self-springing when her pleads to the sun

dried out like cowhide.

By barren I don’t mean unable to bear fruit.

Maybe I misjudged the living desert, until antelopes

sprung out from canyons in Zion, their red fur

minerals manifesting in rock.

Once, I believed my fertility could bring

balance back to earth. Once I thought

I shed the burden of widows.

I know the missing,

my unnamed daughters

this fertile earth.

after Aracelis Girmay and Marina Wilson

Consider the hands

that write this letter.

The left palm stirring the ink of this message,

as it has always done, this gut driven desire

to return to sun craters in grandma’s hands

the imprint of time in her complexion—

I saw once, felt once: hard labor’s silent slap

on the skin, how hands dry up like valleys—

when their giving is feeding, is touching

is the under-nail scent of bleach &

garlic. From her hands I ate morning’s gift:

oatmeal, nuts & honey. Grew into

daily devotion to Jah his earth and all

who mother. For years I have come to see

her this way: one hand submerged in gray

water the other pulling at fabric as if to cast

out demonios that wear us like clothes

& how I pray, I pray to return to her hands:

rough fingers slight bent to disease

a kindness to slow down giving. Though

the giving keeps living beyond the body

that lays to rest. Though my hands don’t

know her labor, I will ink the page,

I will reconstruct the hands

return to what birthed

my becoming.