FIVE POEMS | STEPHANIE ADAMS-SANTOS
At night a woman crosses the courtyard with her hair down
She smells of the river and jade that throbs underground
in hidden place, green brood in the womb of stone
She smells too of past life, of her nostalgia for living
a lonely, violet perfume
that rides sharp and high through the nose, piercing the brain
It’s as though you are walking alone
in a garden. Out of nowhere,
the star cuts you.
You hear the crush of flowers,
a sharp cry, the obsecration of a stem.
Kukulkan is parting the grass
just behind you.
Hairs rise on your neck,
the feeling of becoming aware
of the velvet meat breathing inside of you.
There is nothing after all.
But here outside the house
is the feathery perfume of plaintain,
bitter caramel of dead leaves,
the memories you carry.
Wait and see, tomorrow maybe
the god’s dark head will crown
from the wound.
Objects shed their illusions.
The bottle of rum,
the bottle of whiskey.
Now both are folded into blood.
A note in your grandmother’s hand
passes to yours,
blank, deep red.
You hear the
crush of leaves
of someone walking alone
in the place where the old garden
once had roses —
now the aphids are carved on stone
buried underfoot, stelae of a dead afternoon
Someone calls you from the house,
not your mother not your grandmother,
your secret name tolling like a bell
The scent of melons and milk
A scent of yesterday, calling...
a child parts the dry grass
on its belly, without feet,
coming toward.
Stephanie Adams-Santos is a Guatemalan-American writer whose work spans poetry, prose, screenwriting, and other swampy, hybrid forms. Her work is rooted in the crossroads of ritual, ancestry, and environment — with a penchant for the queer and uncanny. Stephanie's full-length poetry collection, Swarm Queen's Crown (Fathom Books) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. She is also the author of Total Memory (Finishing Line Press), and The Sundering (Poetry Society of America), selected for a New York Chapbook Fellowship. Her work has been supported by fellowships and grants from Oregon Literary Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Film Independent, Regional Arts and Culture Council and Oregon Arts Commission. Stephanie's writing for television includes credits from past and upcoming seasons of Two Sentence Horror Stories (CW/Netflix).
Cover art by Shane Allison.
