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A review by raluca_p
Kingdom Animalia by Aracelis Girmay
4.0
If you buried
all the women standing, the killed women,
kept women, women loved & unloved
who lost something important to this
river Mississippi, if you buried them standing
on one another’s shoulders, from the bottom of the silty bed,
they would rise higher than the water, than the buildings.
The raucous of their skin & feathers are not seen by every eye,
but sometimes a woman will look you in the face
& say the name your grandmother was called. I mean,
it is possible to wear your ghosts like a face,
which is to say, my face has been here before.
(from Mississippi Burial, On the Ferry to Algiers )
*
Perhaps this thing I am calling kindness
is more simple than kindness, rather, recognition
of the neighbor & the blue, shared earth
& the common circumstance of being here:
what remains living of the last
two million, impossible years…
(from On Kindness )
*
Resourceful Gretel who, in eating all the bread,
lets her blood down to mark the way back home!
Like this:
I carry my meat over the earth’s lion mouth
& slowly feed my bodies to the dirt.
(from Self-Por trait as the Snail )
all the women standing, the killed women,
kept women, women loved & unloved
who lost something important to this
river Mississippi, if you buried them standing
on one another’s shoulders, from the bottom of the silty bed,
they would rise higher than the water, than the buildings.
The raucous of their skin & feathers are not seen by every eye,
but sometimes a woman will look you in the face
& say the name your grandmother was called. I mean,
it is possible to wear your ghosts like a face,
which is to say, my face has been here before.
(from Mississippi Burial, On the Ferry to Algiers )
*
Perhaps this thing I am calling kindness
is more simple than kindness, rather, recognition
of the neighbor & the blue, shared earth
& the common circumstance of being here:
what remains living of the last
two million, impossible years…
(from On Kindness )
*
Resourceful Gretel who, in eating all the bread,
lets her blood down to mark the way back home!
Like this:
I carry my meat over the earth’s lion mouth
& slowly feed my bodies to the dirt.
(from Self-Por trait as the Snail )