Michael Dauro – Poetry
Sierra Amnezia
Upon the shoulders of the quiet
saguaros, purple blossoms open
in the moonlight like petaled
fists of sleepy children, palms
of pollen that reel in the humming-
birds by sweetening the evening air.
These birds, these tiny floating
gardens, their tinny squeaks soaked
in the hum of their flight. There are
songs of this desert. How it eats away
at the mind like flurried moths
through gray wool, how the sierran
winds rummage through the skull
like a widow’s hands, plucking only
the ripest of stones from the shores
of memory, before skipping them across
the dunes towards the seared horizon.
Some of these songs end with a traveler
wandering the desert, smearing
sand into her wet eyes, yet there is
one version that sings of the amnesia
as a second chance in being lost, freed
from even yourself. As I walk under
the raised arms of the saguaros, the scents
of my hometown sink into shadow until
there is only desert. My ankles brush
the sage and scrub, and I can no longer
recall my mother’s hands, and soon my
name too, is lost among the humming-
birds, among the blur of their beating
wings, among their ruby and purple
throats flickering in the bronze fog.
Exile
Glass Lullaby
What do you say to a woman weeping?
And how do you gather the whisper
she rolls your way like a glass marble,
its steady growl across the wooden floor
a kind of far-flung thunder. What do you say
to a woman, a woman much like yourself,
half-blind in loss, lost in her own deep brickwork,
what words to utter but to drift in silence, to lift
her cold whisper and bed it upon your tongue,
to roll it in your mouth, to turn towards the door,
to walk away, to listen to the round glass as it clacks
against your teeth like a tiny skull. And what was first
a whisper from lips lacquered in snot, becomes
a lullaby from your childhood. Your hand, stilled
upon the doorknob, grows slack and you hum along,
you hum along and join this woman in weeping.
Michael Luis Dauro is a CantoMundo fellow. The poems that appear in this issue of As Us are from an epic in-progress titled, Sierra Amnezia. These particular poems are informed by research of human trafficking and follow one of the epic’s heroes, Rosaura.
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