Emmy Pérez

Solstice

-the americas

War in sun country
Lights water with orphans.

Braids sawed off. As if arms.

Pray for snow, and thistle
Blooms purple along

Roads. Amaranth grows
Beyond the harvest.

*

Morning sky: more meadow
Than metal. A clear-eyed orphan

With stars on her tongue,

Hiding her siblings
In the sun glow.

A soldier knows a kiss
Won't open that mouth.

Emmy Pérez

Solstice is from Solstice (Swan Scythe Press, 2003). It originally appeared in Dánta: a poetry journal (Vol. #2), and was reprinted in The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007).

Posted on April 21, 2008 2:38 PM