you said
in a letter
here gramma take this leaf I
found
it’s dusty
it’s called luz | light
a thin green thread an oval
sketch
and the moon rolling along a rock
a blossom smell
it’s called orange she said
it’s something to eat
I bought it at the market, for
you
it’s no easy thing, either, a
chick hatching
if there’s no wheathead
if there’s no waiting
if there’s nowhere
sometimes when they’re born
their house cracks
they leave
luz but the leaf’s nerves are covered then
in dust
but there’s no getting mixed up but blowing
the woman gathered up the
wheathead from the ground
this'n hasn't much flour but
it will have purpose
an orange falls the moment you
were passing by
it rolls redolent
I wanted to make something
simple to give you
to give them
to give y'all
some kind of old age
of death even
something like an orange peel
spiral
when you get the whole thing
(the girl from pedro’s house
she didn’t manage
either, got started wrong)
sometimes the skin tears and
breaks
here luz an orange I found it
in the air
and luz isn’t even luz
it isn’t even a falling leaf
—there there’s one there’s one
there! (someone’s celebrating something)
a woman on the threshold peeks
out
she looks from way far off
it was called an orange it was
easy to peel it came off in one piece
it had learned how to fall
simply
upon itself all together.
~luz pichel // tra(n)shumancias // (2015)
trans. neil anderson
