∧
font size
∨

Two Poems 

Maya Evans

A Fine Rain

From the streets of Caracas
she took her in and brought her home
like you pick up a dog gone astray.

“Come,” she said with the voice of a mother
to the little girl of tiger-eyes,
“come with me; I will feed you
beans and plantains and you will bathe
in a bathroom pink like a monkey’s tongue.”

From the garbage mounds, fuming in decay,
rose Victoria of age ten, her skin baked in dirt,
dressed in rags slimy and gray, she followed the voice.

Clothless, under the shower she firmly stood,
brown rivulets flowing down the drain.
Swoosh! In one breath went the weariness,
the hunger, the fear, the weight of emptiness.

In its place, a ribbon of little teeth
unfolded like grains of white rice,
squeezed together in a crooked smile.

“All the rain in one place!” exclaimed the tiny girl,
“How could that be?”



Nowhere to Go

Nowhere to go in Aleppo
Nowhere to run
with only one shoe

Give me a knife that cuts
foul air and muted cries
now that I lay
stripped of jasmine
and orange blossoms

Smelling of death
I forgot the taste
of falling in love
of kisses like bread

Nowhere to go
with only one shoe
ride with me
the night through

Words like saltwater
not even silence
enters my lips

Show me if you can
how to reach heaven
from a shelf
crumbling like a smile
of sand over my head