Five days in the meat locker and the white yarn of bones, I lean against. I need my heart to shoot out, like an arrow, to leave the body by the cobwebs or otherwise send it back in cardboard coffin. I blow air to give love to something— Back home, it’s summer. My toes are numb and if I am to be expelled, naked, into this winter and pounded into a figurine, I want to be the ballerina. The thing to believe here is: Temporary I know it takes time for God to answer prayers. Among the cow’s ruins, a faint light. The only form of language I miss.
Meat Locker Companion
As if he finds his misery and hunger amusing,
he wakes up with a laugh—a bird
half-buried in the grounds
of his chest.
Meal Offering
mañana, mañana, I’ll come home mañana
Please be kind to my story; my tales of this desert ordeal.
Bring some bread for memorials and incense
of dried dirt.
They’ll find rubber soles, a cross-body bag.
They’ll say after sometime only nails and hair are left. The first is kept for secrets, The other is kept for smell.
-- Silvia Bonilla lives in New York where she works as a translator. She received an MFA from The New School. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review,Green Mountains Review, Rhino, Acentos Review, A Women’s Thing, among others. She has received scholarships from The Frost Place, Vermont College of Fine Arts and Tupelo Press.