(for my creative writing students)
we are the shapes which alphabet this earth,
our poems
like pits beneath soil
we are roots of bruised histories &
hungry to pronounce
a mutiny of narratives on fire
we are the unzippered
bath of salt from our spring, shed of
blur & bother
forests of electric citrus bloom
we are the music
found on the other side of windows
the flâneura who catalogue,
painting movies on pages
we are the whispered magic acts
emerging wanderers
like a sea glass disco washing ashore
we are the other’d, the look’d over
we wave our tongues like flags
we are the country of poets, painters, story-
tellers, humans
decoding what it is
to be
alive
Aimee Herman 