Ordinary Things

There are days the goddess forgets

where she placed her earrings.

Not metaphorical stars.

Not moons hammered by celestial gold.

Small silver hoops

left beside the sink

while rushing to answer the door.

Someone is always arriving.

A cousin carrying mangoes wrapped in newspaper. A neighbor asking for cloves.

A child with a bleeding knee.

A friend who needs to laugh

until she forgets what sorrow is called. The goddess moves through the house barefoot.

Oil shimmering along her collarbones. Music low in another room.

A pot threatening to burn.

Outside,

men still write poems

trying to make her into weather,

trying to stretch her body large enough to hold prophecy,

nation,

warning,

desire.

Meanwhile

she is arguing with the fish seller

about prices.

Meanwhile

she is choosing tomatoes

with the concentration of a jeweler.

At dusk,

she sits on the roof

eating sliced guava with salt and pepper, watching laundry bend softly in the wind.

Below her,

the city continues its hunger.

Motorbikes coughing smoke.

Radios arguing through open windows. Somebody falling in love loudly.

The goddess laughs.

Not delicately.

She laughs

from the center of herself,

head thrown back,

full-throated and alive enough

to startle birds resting on telephone wires.

When night comes,

she oils her knees.

Answers no one.

Lets the world carry itself awhile.

Tomorrow they will ask for miracles again. She will offer nothing

except her living.

Tomorrow

she will wake late again,

wrap her scarf slightly crooked,

stop to taste fruit at the market,

as if holiness has always belonged to ordinary things.

AUTHOR BIO