It is night. It’s very dark. In a house far away
a red sun has drained into the sea.
From the city I left, the cold changed direction
over continents, became a season of heat
in a single night. I don’t remember a time
of departure, the titles of books I intended
to bring, or the last meal I ate. Palm leaves
prowl the walls. The only light comes from
the nearest shore where piles of garbage
are lit on fire, flames bright and quick, faded
to embers smoking for hours. Mustapha,
the man who drove me to this house
of cool tile and cracked mosaics fenced in
by brick, says I’m too frail for this land,
that I will chew red dirt blown into my mouth
by hot winds, that I will shrink from the pleas
of beggars, or orphaned children pulling at my skirt.
He told me not to travel south to the village
built with paper, where families live in
cardboard boxes sealed with dried mud,
lay their heads to rest on empty milk cartons.
A child drowned in a puddle there last week.
The things I thought I loved don’t matter.
The home I left is locked in a vague
memory surrounded by a wide moat. The crossing
was rough, and I can’t go back to that life.
In these late hours, thought ladders down
the years, selves dissolve in foreign places,
fear freeing me from the grip of identity.
I cannot remember the first time I heard
my name, and I remain awake, listen
for it in the earliest bird call at dawn.

The post Letter from Dakar appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Low creature, I appear at your door,
possum or rat having rifled through garbage,
or a small child sent outside digging
under the house when I belonged
at chairs, at tables, in rooms that once warmed me.
Your dark wall is a shadow I try to scale
as a dog searching her master’s mouth filled
with silence. I call to you over the gate
locked–I love you–each word a scab
broken again by blood. I am the virgin
you have seen outside your bedroom window
watching you make love to any woman but my mother.
I would touch your rough hands. I would kiss them, tend
your bedside, press my lips to yours. I would wind
your arm around my neck. I catch you,
always, in the act of leaving, and I follow.

Karen Carissimo‘s first book of poems, Dream City, is forthcoming from Iris Press. Her poems appear in Many Mountains Moving, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Western Humanities Review, and other journals.

The post Imago appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

named after American presidents, I ask passing face

after passing face, where, where … Such tight
mouths and hunched figures pestered by losses

petty or grievous, disappear into alleys.
A destination does not lead home, not to arrival,

or a forgiving nod to the past. These epiphanies
elude as fading roads on worn maps. Here,

the days pass by anonymous lives, glide
into quiet afternoons. I find the cool arms

of streetcars, the haven of warm cafes.
A flushed sky settles over the city, a monument

built of dusk where pigeons fly around church
spires and matchbooks blur in wet gutters.

Karen Carissimo‘s first book of poems, Dream City, is forthcoming from Iris Press. Her poems appear in Many Mountains Moving, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Western Humanities Review, and other journals.

*Photo courtesy of TyMotion.

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