Only the moon came
over the hills—a good nurse
in sensible shoes. My breath
caught in the branches
of my ribs.
The only house I visit
is you, on the veranda
collecting the mountains.
Pale light breathes in color—blue
dress, the red heart of your shawl.
*
The form will come, but
the day brings no guarantees
except hole-mending peace.
In crevices, rosemary embraces
mustard and spirits.
One day I could fin-
ish my sentences the next—.
Today
a gray dove struts on the fence
unfolds its note to the wind.
*
Milk-white mist fringes
the balcony. Hands pressed to
a chilled pane. To learn
to speak quietly
at such a distance, to you.
My nature is dust.
Members of my clan, breadcrumbs
rest in reunion.
On the breakfast table, red
jam configures the hours.
*
To enter a garden
of loss, the shyness of moss
covering the ground yet holding
its own. I close the gates.
At dawn, my eyes are green.
You miss the daily
things you can’t do, held by doors
or days. Little things—
pruning roses, salting a stew,
how the mailbox creaked open.
*
this bed of—. roses.
the sea. a truck. ashes. soil.
lettuce. nails.
the wrong side of.
make one’s. raise the. get into—
with. climb out of. put it to.
Away from the house,
the garden turns informal.
A bird scratches the sky,
its backbone
reveals—
*
Boredom is a treat,
a treatment in the tallest solarium
where the hawk surveys the hills.
From up there, nothing is new.
Everything exhales, Begin.
Conjugating days
as a hawk circles the plains.
Small mammals scurry
for cover. The cactus flowers’
pink upturned faces, dreaming.
*
At noon the red hawk
preens on the steel tower
beak pointing west of the hills.
I stir milk and tea,
look up and he’s flown.
I want to forget the day
I will not remember. You,
counting raindrops for me.
If presence were a name
I would label all those beads.
*
Getting older, this wisdom,
the taste as it vanishes.
One day I could riot,
the next brought me
gifts of flowers and fears.
The lilies you sent
open like letters perfumed.
A cacophony
of snowy trumpets. Wiping
the table, amber dust falls.
*
Awoke to the verbs
of unnamable ghost birds.
Studious minutes
emptying the dishwasher.
Black coffee dripping, faithful.
The tea water complained,
the rain is a rival
impossible to beat.
The impurity of living
falls on rooftops. Oh! I’m here.
*
On her way to freedom,
she counted samambaias
as friends, her history.
They thought she was naïve,
impractical, beautiful.
On the tenth day, rain.
The hawk on the tower tucks
beak to chest. Almond
speck in the storm’s milky froth,
a seed scheming its rebirth.
*left column: Angela Narciso Torres; right column: Lúcia Leão
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 3.
Angela Narciso Torres is the author of What Happens is Neither (Four Way Books 2021) and Blood Orange (Willow Books). Recent work appears in POETRY, Poetry Northwest, and Prairie Schooner. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program and the reviews editor for RHINO, Angela has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Ragdale Foundation. She lives in Southern California.
Lúcia Leão is a translator and a writer originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her work has been published in Harvard Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, SWWIM, Gyroscope Review, Chariton Review, and in the anthology Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment & Healing. The author of two books published in Brazil, she has been living in Florida for twenty-five years.
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