Jess

“We are only atoms trailing the carved skull wrapped inside a sunbeam.”
― Sherwin Bitsui

“Moonlight

I know when the sun is in China
because the night shining other-light
crawls into my bed. She is moon.
Her eyes slit and yellow she is the last
one out of a dingy bar in Albuquerque—
Fourth Street, or from similar avenues
in Hong Kong. Where someone else has also
awakened, the night thrown back and asked,
'where is the moon, my lover'?
And from here I always answer in my dreaming,
'the last time I saw her was in the arms
of another sky'.”
― Joy Harjo, She Had Some Horses

“Vision

The rainbow touched down
'somewhere in the Rio Grande,'
we said. And saw the light of it
from your mother's house in Isleta.
How it curved down between earth
and the deepest sky to give us horses
of color
horses that were within us all of this time
but we didn't see them because
we wait for the easiest vision
to save us.

In Isleta the rainbow was a crack
in the universe. We saw the barest
of all life that is possible.
Bright horses rolled over
and over the dusking sky.
I heard the thunder of their beating
hearts. Their lungs hit air
and sang. All the colors of horses
formed the rainbow,
and formed us
watching them.”
― Joy Harjo, She Had Some Horses

“I remember that morning vividly
my eyes crusted from crying
Staring across from you
your cheeks smudged with campfire ash.
We smiled weakly at each other,
and I told myself we were good.
I promised I would stop drinking so much.
You believed me.
I looked over the boat at my reflection in the water.
I looked kind of happy
for someone who was drowning.”
― Mary Lambert, Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across