Verano, El Repunte, by Alexandra Lytton Regalado

Verano, El Repunte
after Pajaros, Cementerio de Graciela Iturbide
 
We slept in fog.
             Our lives pressed between two panes.
I’ve taken an ax to all that’s browned.
Set the palm roof onto the pyre.
             The braid unbound.
I pulled the pearl buttons from your shirts.
             Made eyes for cotton dolls.
I hate the retelling of dreams.
             I carry out the last that will burn.
Birds double as smoke, cloak us with ash.
            On the doorframe, a caterpillar shroud.
             I am no taller than these walls.
All that is flammable at the forefront.
How do you end if not an epiphany?
            Wings glance my skin.
My hands empty of what I still want.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado
​
Alexandra Lytton Regalado’s second poetry collection, Relinquenda, is winner of the National Poetry Series (Beacon Press, forthcoming fall 2022.) She is the author of Matria, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). Alexandra is a CantoMundo and Letras Latinas fellow, winner of the Coniston Prize, and her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Academy of American Poets, Narrative, Gulf Coast, and Creative Nonfiction among others. Her poetry has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2018, The Wandering Song, Misrepresented People, and others. Co-founder of Kalina publishing, Alexandra is author, editor, and/or translator of more than fifteen Central American-themed books. She is chief editor at lapiscuchamagazine.com (a literary magazine dedicated to the Salvadoran community) and she is assistant editor at SWWIM (Supporting Women Writers in Miami). Her ongoing photo-essay project about El Salvador, through_the_bulletproof_glass, is on Instagram. For more info: www.alexandralyttonregalado.com