POEM
Firefly Under the Tongue
I love you from the sharp tang of the fermentation;
in the blissful pulp. Newborn insects, blue.
In the unsullied juice, glazed and ductile.
Cry that distills the light:
through the fissures in fruit trees;
under mossy water clinging to the shadows. The
papillae, the grottos.
In herbaceous dyes, instilled. From the flustered touch.
Luster
oozing, bittersweet: of feracious pleasures,
of play splayed in pulses.
Hinge
(Wrapped in the night's aura, in violaceous clamor,
refined, the boy, with the softened root of his tongue
expectant, touches,
with that smooth, unsustainable, lubricity—sensitive lily
folding into the rocks
if it senses the stigma, the ardor of light—the substance, the arris
fine and vibrant—in its ecstatic petal, distended—[jewel
pulsing half-open; teats], the acid
juice bland [ice], the salt marsh,
the delicate sap [Kabbalah], the nectar
of the firefly.)
Translated by Forrest Gander
Source: Poetry (April 2007).
This poem originally appeared in the April 2007 issue of Poetry.
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Coral Bracho was born in Mexico City in 1951 and has published five books of poetry. Her . . . MORE »
