Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing
flowers home.
—Wisława Szymborska
In the Kashmir mountains,
my brother shot many men,
blew skulls from brown skins,
dyed white desert sand crimson.
What is there to say to a man
who has
poet
Natalie Diaz
Natalie Diaz is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press, 2012). She teaches at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.
by this poet
poem
2012
poem
2012
He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps
when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.
O God, he said, O God.
He wants to kill me, Mom.
When Mom unlocked and opened the front door
at 3 a.m., she was in her nightgown, Dad was asleep.
He wants to kill me, he told her poem
2015
I have gazed the black flower blooming
her animal eye. Gacela oscura. Negra llorona.
Along the clayen banks I follow her-astonished,
gathering grief’s petals she lets fall like horns.
Why not now go toward the things I love?
Like Jacob’s angel, I touched the garnet of her wrist,
and