Solstice

-the americas
War in sun country
Lights water with orphans.
Braids sawed off. As if arms.
Pray for snow, and thistle
Blooms purple along
Roads. Amaranth grows
Beyond the harvest.
*
Morning sky: more meadow
Than metal. A clear-eyed orphan
With stars on her tongue,
Hiding her siblings
In the sun glow.
A soldier knows a kiss
Won’t open that mouth.

Emmy Pérez
Solstice is from Solstice (Swan Scythe Press, 2003). It originally appeared in Dánta: a poetry journal (Vol. #2), and was reprinted in The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007).