The child looks back at the window of the room he's just fled,
each pane now filled with sparks, each spark one of his toys—
monkey spark, matchbox spark, yo-yo spark.

It was the smoke that woke him, nothing else. When he woke
the air was just smoke, but now it is studded with sparks.

Lightning bugs, he thinks, my room is filled with lightning bugs.

Mom in her bathrobe, her boyfriend in his boxers, sparks swirl
around their words.

He wants to run back inside, but he cannot—his feet sink into
the lawn.

The trees reflect the house now, their leaves illuminated from below.
Like the palms of gospel singers, he thinks.

Years later, he will be in bed beside a woman & he will tell her about
the fire—We all made it out okay, he tells her, his eyes still studded
with sparks. But when she reaches for him it is with hands of smoke,
the smoke a cloud in his lungs, as if too much dark lived there.

Outside his window, it's that tree again, singing.

What you can't hear is the light caught inside each bud.
What you can't hear is the leaves caught inside each spark.
from the bookI WILL DESTROY YOU/ Graywolf Press
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Head shot of Allen Ginsberg

"The ghostly solitude—I am the king of the dead, on their ancient throne—sitting 1000 years later lording over these ghosts, questioning in the later moonlight, from the height of the sacrificial stone.

And the stars over the dead city, so far away—suddenly in the presence of the Universe itself."

via LIT HUB

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Cover of Aracelis Girmay's book, Teeth
What Sparks Poetry:
Cynthia Dewi Oka
on Aracelis Girmay’s “Arroz Poetica”

"I first encountered this poem in my early twenties, when I had just started to consciously write poems. It was a very difficult time in my life—I was a young mother juggling several precarious jobs and still grieving the loss of my father and separation from my community as a result of my decision to raise my child on my own. I was living like a ghost."
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