THE RAIN AT DZORWULU
                                              Dzorwulu, Ghana

Remember the road from Dzorwulu, & how it took you down
into the deep, high grasses to cross a field
that rattled with the tails of lizards
cutting through the dried, sharp blades
& how this made you remember where it is you came from,
& the sea in which you swam before
above a coral of brains, & weeds that undulated at your side
slowly, like a grass church choir, back & forth, in deep green robes,
beyond which girls selling ice water from silver tin tubs balanced like crowns on
their closely shaven heads, & the line of a child in the distance
macheteing cane into a red, bright wheelbarrow
that stood, a house of shade, for one white, white chicken
who would not dance or come out from under there,
& the thousand boys on the side of the long road, remember them
selling glass-bottle sodas & black wood
carved into human faces when a wailish prayer
rose up at sunfall from one man’s purple mouth
into the sky to be a god, a silver flock
of minnows flitting rainish above the grass & road, remember
how you opened your mouth to it
& tilted your wet head back, & showed your teeth,
your tongue, & let your larynx become a ladder
for that wild weather to descend
into your deep black & crimson spaces,
the third chamber of your lapis pump, your easts
& wests & norths & souths, your million intricate rooms
of groves & orchids who lifted their dresses
& opened their yards to the shells & hills of that rain
& how it shone, & what it carried with it
in its glistening, centipede arms.

mp3
 

TO THE (HEART) HORSE

Oh, hooves who never killed me even once,
though there were chances,
I remember you on this road through Pennsylvania —
fog riding the hills like steam off a horse’s neck,
your neck, I flew hard over
into the (dusty) sequined air
like a rag doll ballet of tendons, acrobat
shuffled up by your neck’s jubilee. I am sure
my heart was kicking, but there was not one afternoon I did not climb
back up & shove both feet into the dark Us of your saddle,
to the hum, I remember now,
to the hum of square boxes stacked
in the beekeeper’s field, my teeth
wore grids of red silt
kicked up by your lilac stomp. Work. Maybe
I did not love you well (enough)
or maybe you were just tired
or both, but noon after afternoon
for at least 200 days, you tried to tell me something. God knows.
Should have just set you loose.
You were not mine or mine to give away.
But still, I should have known
that before September they’d turn you dead for going crazy. You see,
even the dog is running in its sleep, & the mind
cannot be blamed for its 5 places at once,
or the songs that it hears when it is walking.
& whose fault is it that the brain is a grenade
or a table off of which plates fall,
& what animal was I to tell you not to dance,
to not have heard the tambourines, their banshees,
to have kept you from jackknifing into heaven
by the vexed haul-over of your own wild feet.

mp3
 

Copyright © Aracelis Gimay 2007

Aracelis Girmay writes poetry, fiction, & essays. Originally from Santa Ana, California, she earned degrees from Connecticut College & NYU. Girmay is a Cave Canem Fellow & former Watson Fellow. Her poems have been published in Callaloo, Bellevue Literary Review, Indiana Review, and Ploughshares, among others. Her book of poems, Teeth, will be published by Curbstone Press: summer, 2007.