Aracelis Girmay - Mar 2, Iyengar II & I

From the age of Hip-Hop, an heir to the Beat poets.

BREAK

When the boys are carnivals

we gather round them in the dark room

& they make their noise while drums

ricochet against their bodies & thin air

below the white ceiling hung up like a moon

& it is California, the desert. I am driving in a car,

clapping my hands for the beautiful windmills,

one of whom is my brother, spinning,

on a hillside in the garage with other boys he’ll grow old with, throw back.

How they throw back their bodies

on the cardboard floor, then spring-to, flying

like the heads of hammers hitting strings

inside of a piano.

Again, again.

This is how they fall & get back up…