Sunday Poem

Teeth
—for cousin Gedion, who drove us to Massawa
.

Two sisters ride down with us.
It is liberation day in Massawa.

The older sister is the color of injera; her teeth are big
& stuck out.
The younger sister is a cinnamon stick.

Their almond eyes are the same.
Ink black hair falls beautiful down both their backs.

I see that you love one of them & change my mind
many times about who I think it is.

Months later, I will show their photographs to my father
who will laugh & say he knows.

“It is this one,” he will say, surely, pointing
to the woman whose teeth stay, tame, in her mouth.

But what man would choose a woman
whose mouth looks stronger than his hands?

Know, Cousin, I pray there is love
between you & the older one
whose teeth might be bullets of ivory;

I imagine from this mouth:
kites,
rain,
ax equal to lace, the yellow & lick
of a jar filled with
the sweet of stinging bees.
.

by Aracelis Girmay