Three Poems

Even When the Death is Brutal, a Sloth Will Smile As it Dies

on picture day
in first grade, a boy
tells me i am always
smiling, i hide my face
ashamed of exposing
the feigning for joy
that lies in the teeth
my father says look
like a rabbit’s, when
he laughs nothing could
be funnier than watching
his daughter learn to burrow
herself into her own wanting,
this would not be the
first time, i’d see
myself as animal, or bear
all the grin within me, even
as the orthodontist fits a mold
into my mouth for the process
of straightening a crooked jaw,
the acrylic slides down
my throat: a lesson for the
necessity of choking for
the straightening of a mouth
clawing dissent— the gap
between my front teeth defies
diligence, invincible chasm
just like my grandmother’s
who’s conceived a history of
women smiling amidst the
presence of their husbands,
the photos show the light
of her mouth radiating her will
to exist with a persistence, a man
once equates to loving me, the
morning after, i beam my teeth
to shield the aftermath of
knowing my body
has been lifted
away from myself, i watch
a mother tell her baby to
smile at the nice man
because this is how
we thank him,
this innocence of
learning the owing
of happiness
to the world—outside,
the landscape yawns
its soothing green
in acres meeting the wild
turmoil of waters, the peace
guides a crescent to part my
lips, the teeth ease their way
across my face— in a tree
a sloth rests its life among
branches, its smile
enduring, the blazing heat,
unstirred as it falls its body
a crash to earth, it laughs
at itself because it does
not know how not to marvel
at its own survival, its gracious
grin, wide i can’t help but
watch its round cheeks
lift themselves apart.

My Brother Outruns a Dog on W. Concord St.

It is 1999. On the way home, the sidewalks sabotage our feet with unequal bricks. Our legs drag from school, straight home our mother says, every morning. It is the afternoon. The church bells corral ladies to the sidewalk. God has a message every day. They listen and mourn a man who died—rose. Each a version of our grandmother. Cracked, black skin, hidden under white gloves. Cloaked knuckles clutching aluminum covered fried chicken. The smell floats past us hungry latch key kids, almost mesmerizing. So enthralled we don’t notice the dog. Panting. This dog, alive. The first one we’ve ever seen. We are rooted. The dog, with a stare more confident than all my nine years, my sister’s seven. My brother, a restless wedge between us. He is named after our father, but we call him something else. We build a distance in the naming. My father believes my brother is just a boy.  My mother tells me he needs the pills to focus. My father teaches the boy about fire. Hovers his small palms above boiling water. My brother survives the heat. He is reborn unafraid. My brother is darker than us all, no one calls him a curse aloud. Instead, the recommendations are made. Enough to prune his unruly edges. My brother has this look. The first time I see it, is after he beats a boy who pushes our sister. My brother watches the stray, with a look that reminds me that he knows how to protect. In this stillness, he is almost foreign. Serious. His face placid against the dog’s howling. Our bodies still suspended. His body still and unafraid. His legs churn. Sudden sprint. Past the dog, towards home. His brown legs whisking beyond the dog’s heaving. The bite devastatingly close against a martyr in flight. Yet it all stops. Fleeting as it began. The disinterested animal cowers down the street, disappears. This beastly apparition, my brother barely remembers. The speed of rising, a feeling, he’ll never unlearn.

Heredity

My mother gives birth to apparition
Her children exist in company of shadows

I learn not to be afraid of the dead
My father teaches how to exist among hauntings

He houses inherited pain in his prayers
Expels his demons in his drinking

We watch our home crack open in seance
How our ancestors dance history alive

Our parents are vessels of antiquity
Rejoicing, mourning, reveling in our lineage

Trace these lines, they’ll lead to ruptured paradise
Curious creatures swallowing the fullness of earth

In suspended portrait, a tree shields their bodies
Watch—my mother’s mother give birth to ghosts

________

Tatiana (she/her/hers) is a writer, artist and educator in the Boston area. She’s an MFA candidate in poetry at Emerson College and former poetry editor for Redivider. She’s received an honorable mention for the 2020 Academy of American Poets Prize, been published in Southern Humanities Review as an Honorable Mention selection for the 2019 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, judged by Vievee Francis, and is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee. Tatiana’s writing is forthcoming in Kweli, Transition Magazine among others.  Her writing explores ancestral trauma, mental health and healing. Visit her website at tatianamrjohnson.com.