Unrealized Lineages / Anthroposymbiosis
after francine j. harris
Water is the first mother
but thunder roams in my body
for days before it
cracks me open:
horificio
horror
hortaliza
hornamento
horneado
oriundo
oración
My language drips thus
an effervescent dusk, howl
clasping my hips wide
Terrible things have been
said about birth how
moving towards the future
gashes memory fluid
In this electricity I can
only desire ghosts green
canopy coercing the sun
silent so ancestors
bloom on my flesh I am
licked clean with their roots
Blossoms of wield and would
These tongues solace my wound
anthropocene refuge
as the shrinking commences
for nothing is remembered
without some sugar on the eyes
staining color sweet rubbing
irises true flesh on everything
as the shrieking deafens us all
I will hold on to the song of my beloveds—
this is ours, this is everyone’s
waiting for the next storm in a pool of belonging
blessing ourselves with soil
burying death along with us
feast in the afterlife
never ending laughter
Nicole Arocho Hernández grew up in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. Her poems have been featured in The Acentos Review, Seventh Wave Magazine, The Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, I Have No Ocean, was published by Sundress Publications and is available online. Her second chapbook is forthcoming with Glass Poetry Press. She is the Translations Editor at Hayden’s Ferry Review and an MFA candidate at Arizona State University. You can find her on social media: @nimaarhe
