Echoes
- Echoes
My hair gone gray and the hills on fire. Goodbyegrass. Goodbye grassland. I take scissors to my hair and post the picture to the internet.
Meanwhile, the gyre. Stirring our garbage. Those 28,000 rubber ducks.When I fly to Japan, I pass over the North Pacific one. There are four others.
Two months after Fukushima, the first mutations appear in the pale grass blue butterfly.Dented eyes. Forked antennas. Unable to fight their way out of cocoons.
Back in California, my Buddhist dentist says Go ahead—grieve the tooth; I'll be back in five.I think of my husband, kind, of infinite mouth and mind. We do not have children.
Milk teeth, we say. Permanent teeth. No tooth will grow to take its place.I bite down on the gauze to stop the bleeding. [End Page 9]
Cintia Santana is a poet and interdisciplinary artist. The recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, she currently teaches as poetry and fiction workshops in Spanish, as well as literary translation courses at Stanford University.
