By Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Give me a church
made entirely of salt.
Let the walls hiss
and smoke when
I return to shore.
I ask for the grace
of a new freckle
on my cheek, the lift
of blue and my mother’s
soapy skin to greet me.
Hide me in a room
with no windows.
Never let me see
the dolphins leaping
into commas
for this water-prayer
rising like a host
of sky lanterns into
the inky evening.
Let them hang
in the sky until
they vanish at the edge
of the constellations —
the heroes and animals
too busy and bright to notice.
Source: Poetry (July 2017)
Poet Bio
Aimee Nezhukumatathil was born in Chicago to a Filipina mother and South Indian father. She earned her BA and MFA from The Ohio State University and was a Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is poetry editor of Orion magazine and is currently professor of English in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi. She lives with her husband and sons in Oxford, Mississippi.
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