Sarah Maria Medina—Poetry
Inversions on the 30th Parallel
You’ve got dates with three fates set up,
—————but you’re calling my spiritual voicemail.
I hear you crying at night. I catch your salt
—————in my palms & wake to the river shivering
in the corner of my bed. Not one
—————of us bending to the weight of the other— you see, I love
like this. You kiss my mouth
—————like a soft king & smoke three from your femme cartel. You
say, I’m here now, & I hit replay. I wake to constellate across
—————your black chest & you soldier a third.
I wait for you to find me, nights I’m out cold. You touch
—————the light on the inside of my skin. Hours sung by bullets,
you must move away from the window. You must
—————take your espresso the same: black. I don’t know
if I’m one of gold. You must still go out
—————when the bombs fall. Are you capable of loving
another man’s seed? I search through sacred cell
—————text & try to find meaning in astral planes. I dose
myself to Paris, then Cairo, but always return to exile.
—————You must stay inside the studio to avoid
nuclear fallout. When I’ve gone,
—————I find you in our blessed wet city, in my old bed
& then wake again to dark. Is it obsession? When the heavens
—————complete their rotation. Me with a baby in the back
& you all shine on tour. Each of us stacking.
—————Will we meet in the water tower? Is it the burning
that rivers through our city? They say you were chosen, we fell
—————from the tower to the sea, they say there is no sea.
Sarah María Medina is a poet and a fiction/creative non-fiction writer from the American Northwest. Her writing has been published in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Prelude, PANK, Split This Rock, Raspa Literary Journal, and elsewhere. She is an ARTIST UP Grant LAB recipient for her poetry manuscript in progress “Ochun’s Daughter.” Her work is forthcoming in Bettering American Poetry’s 2017 anthology. She is also the poetry editor at Winter Tangerine. Medina is Boricua (The United Confederation of Taíno People). She is at work on several projects.
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