Active Chapter

After June Jordan’s “Poem for Haruko”

Eka Savajol

I never thought I’d live the present with rigor

or freedom

like your budding hairs

a herd of mustangs finally free

charging through the plain

of your stomach / a new season

rung in by their migration south

toward the viscous trickle

of your laughter

But now I do

soak in a morning of bananas

on toast and coffee and

country songs interspersed

with cigarettes and sheets

we sprawled across:

     How easily we lay

parallel

to the low hum

of the road

Now I do

retrieve my boy-crazy girlhood you

magazine heartthrob I must

become / transforming so often with

such constance

we are suspended in air

hummingbirds pollinating

lusts and bashful

confessions

With you and missing you

now I do