Ariga: Poetry: Les enfants d'hier (Yesterday’s Children) and other poems by Mia of Tryst

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Les enfants d'hier (Yesterday’s Children)

By Mia

(for Sylvia Plath)

After forty years of exile the woman
returns to her home, backyard
now buckling under milkweed
honeysuckle, broken boughs.
The ash and remainder of the fence
so much like the ribcage of animal
tossed on its side.

Upstairs, knots of dark yellow
and sounds of small voices
seep through the black fenestra.
Quietly the shape of a woman slips
into the house dank with its smell
of obsolescence. She calls to them,

Mes enfants, venez!

Footsteps pad through the halls, giggles
wind through the rafters, dust lands in her hair.
But they are nowhere to be found and she cannot
remember their names.

Salamander

Trapped in a crate of flesh,
collapsible knees and shoulders
shuddering at the sight of blood

this is my naked albino soul
which has no nose, no tongue
nor ears, or depth of perception.

Transparent only to a few--
this pain, sensing light swims
toward promises of water.

Bitter Roots

Do you still dream
the green taste of sunflower
seeds
in their mallow husks?
Shell to shell, the craving
that never ends, berries
devoured before their time.

Spring had arrived late
and summer too early
when the locusts spied
a feast
through that pale opening
in the earth between dawn
and dusk. All the remaining
light swallowed up by hunger.

That time a farmer
on his way to market
dropped a sweet potato
the road,
tasted of so much dirt.

Do you still dream
the taste of their burnt bodies,
the savored crunch of grasshoppers
before black milk hits the tongue
crisp wings stuck to the fingers.

Like the wings of a lone sparrow
caught in the winter of blades, icicles
hung in the air by claws. The boys
shot it down with a sling and plucked
its feathers untidily; licked their lips
tossed what looked to be a bone
at your feet. You cannot
imagine eating such a thing
its small body
shriveled up in mute shudder
toes curled, eyes closed.

No, you do not dream
the forsaken life.

Missing (1991)

i.

I have entered this city with no mission
I am job, hunting for itself. Sift
through the want ads, circle noon
and call it a day.

Can you hear
the faintest mewl of a kitten
pulled by a strand of wind
or the door's unoiled "no"
to the beggar's pounding?

These tidbits of thoughts
kicked along sidewalks
crawl into a corner,
shiver and collect fur.

ii.

Wherever I show up, I am missing
the present fixation. Past tense
of something left behind and forgotten

What can be salvaged by fury of action
or the constant drain of patience?

You see
I have no light to give. Even
a street lamp blurry with vision
has a flame buried in deep yellow
as moths once perceived.

My thoughts, however,
seep through the night and bleed
the purple phlox of its hue.

Mia is the editor of Tryst. Her poetry, fiction, essays, reviews and interviews have been published in various print and online journals.

Five Poems by Mia at Ariga Mia through Google

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