What I Remember

LaToya Jordan
 

Silence

Reborn inside the hushed center
of a metal tornado in muted swirl around me,
I touch down on November-cold black tar
with only the sound of my breath
to guide me in God’s absence.

Teeth

My body dances to the rhythm of Pop Rocks’
fizz mingling in my mouth with blood.
I spit the music into my hands
to mine fool’s gold, jagged nuggets of white,
worthless because they can’t be reattached.

Blood

The car had a taste of human in the past
and could not control its cravings for more.
It bored a hole in the trunk of my neck
to drain me of sticky sweet sap.
I watch the blood spout, a horror film
rainbow with pot of mangled steel at the end.

Flying

Adrenaline shapes my body into a cloud.
I float up to the window of the helicopter
and watch my broken self inside.
She lies in corpse pose on the stretcher.
I sing her a lullaby about the freedom of flying.
She can’t hear me over the chop of metal wings.

ER

Fingers touch me everywhere.
Stick me with pins, I am a voodoo doll
whose cotton has come unstuffed.
The doctor sews a barbed wire
smile on my face.

Home

The thing reflected in the mirror
has forgotten her name. Created from broken glass,
sheet metal, and human error, she runs away from home
to wander the world in search of her kind.
They will call her Beauty.

LaToya Jordan is a native Brooklynite whose poetry has appeared in MiPOesias, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The November 3rd Club, The Splinter Generation, qarrtsiluni, and other journals. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles and mentors a budding young writer with the organization Girls Write Now. She blogs about her writing life at www.latoyalikestowrite.com.