Small Flames in my Hands
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Small Flames in my Hands
From here everything is distorted: Fire merges with water And cocking heads fade into nighttime A black ocean swallows everything— The sky, the clouds, White mountains rising out of some formless world From here everything shifts: Sparks converge to show The elaborate curvature of a woman's hips The distant pole—Tower of Babel Stairway leading into serpentine head Or the sudden bifurcation of one life I will read The strange geography of fire and wind, The coded language of a lover's hair, And an arm folded behind an arching back There will be no faces No names will be spoken, no love confessed This will simply be a moment in time
Goddonny Normil, born in New Jersey and reared in Port-au-Prince, works as a Senior Technical Writer with Lockheed Martin supporting the U.S. Census Bureau. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
