Alicia Mireles Christoff

In Memoriam T.A.C., 1952-2000

The tide 

is holy.

Go greet it.

The stain 

of yesterday’s lipstick

is holy.

The boy says

my little sister 

thinks the bird 

in the backyard

is our uncle

come back to life

as a raven.

Is it? 

It’s still there.

Kurt who wasn’t drafted

died at 19

by electric wires.

Empty hands 

are holy.

The underglow

of a yellow poppy’s 

petals is holy,

and the place

a stricken tree

grows a swell.

In September

I left a plastic

tiki-drink camel

standing orange

on the stony edge

of Washington 

Square fountain.

Spindle legs,

twin towers.

Go greet it.

Resin scraped

with a paperclip

from your wooden bowl

is holy,

and the bleed-through

of magic marker

on newsprint.

I went to meet you again

a mirage in Maine’s 

cold waters.

It was your face I saw out there

and not the glare of sun

off the sea.

I came so close 

I could see the salt caked

into your crow’s feet.

You knew me by

my brown skin.

And then I let you go again.

waterbirths

the child before you I gifted to the Dead Sea

buoyed, boying I pushed from my legs a jellied pellet

translucent as salt and lightninged through 

with a shock of red vein

down it sank to the seabed

down like a dream to its navel

from the east bank I squinted back into the glare of 

Birket Lut’s twin suns, sky and alkaline

when a black speck, a whirring, marred my vision

sunspot, vitreous debris? no a drone, a droning: a war toy

westbound 

it stalled plummeted retraced my baby’s plumb-line

and I prayed we’d saved more than one son

*

the child before that I abandoned to her father’s head

reverse-Zeus genesis, bred of semen and unconviction

this girl I relegated to realms of boyish rights

kingdoms of drummed up dissatisfaction

I figured it was as good and miserable a sub-set of the world as any

and there she still rules, unborn Aquarian, 

with infant scepter gripped in reflex-curled fist

and crown of placental blood 

matting her downy scalpline curls

*

but you, you un-nursed on red raspberry leaf 

and hot Housatonic, you will be born

I’ll find you in my own cradle

confluence of Huron and Erie

under a cloud of algal bloom in too-clear waters

I’ll wrest you from zebra mussel’s maw 

clinging fast against microplastic current 

I’ll swim you to shore between the steel legs of the Ambassador

I’ll name you en español

we’ll reshape my sisters’ mouths around your vowels: repitan

their tongues will roll 

my mother will remember the words her own parents cooed

 and chiquitita: we’ll find them all something clean to drink