poems: Aricka Foreman

hindsight

the potted lily was a horrible gift
but you should have seen your face, excited you

had found a keepsake, something
to root my name, keep the delicate coo

when we made love, living. it was easy

in the beginning, to coddle each bud, swell
with each drop that found its way to the top
through the rich earth. months passed

we pretended we could make ourselves familiar,
ignored the wounds, their slender open mouths

when I moved it to the floor, I sat on the edge
of the bed, asking why as I watched the stems limp over

the sides split down into the dry dirt
the roots, small like empty veins

settled

a man with a thick papaya tongue
lies across his wife’s stomach, listens
to the drum of fireflies thumping through
his ear. he says her hands feel like wings
on his back, bandaged up in his shiny ties.
she hums a crooked smile tilts against
her broken nose

listen to those tiny fists. this is how you loved me
at first, how you softened me from the inside out.

ARICKA FOREMAN is a writer, performer and educator. A Cave Canem fellow, she has had work published in Off The Record: Performance Poems and Prose, anthologies The Lion Speaks: Poems for Hurricane Katrina and Black, White, & Blue in Detroit and she has work published in the The Drunken Boat literary journal as well as Torch Poetry: A Journal for African American Women. She is currently a writer-in-residence in Detroit Public Schools and has worked with the Prison Creative Arts Project through the University of Michigan.

Photo Credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths