her ebony hair to her knees hid
her twisted young spine & limp
love to him her coconut sweat
her sweet bread her whispers
of his given name ay, gerónimo
every time he wrote her songs
by lantern light in bed every dawn
his kiss still on her lips the machete’s
glint gone ten hours a day
her mama luisa rushed the midwife’s no
salted her daughter’s tears the S curve
of her back impossible passage to birth
the trees flamed with flowers the day
their only son was born
A Solstice MFA graduate, multilingual poet and 2016 NEPR Arts & Humanities award recipient, María Luisa Arroyo is an Assistant Professor of Writing and First-Year Studies at Bay Path University. She is the author of a book of poems, Gathering Words: Recogiendo Palabras (Bilingual Review, 2008) and the chapbook, Flight (Thousand Hands Press, 2016). Recent poems appear in Calyx and WomenArts Quarterly.
