7 Quotes by Jennifer Givhan

The rocks pummeled her belly. Something rose in her throat and when she tried to speak, from her mouth she dislodged a rock. She was made of rocks. She couldn’t move from the fossilized casing she’d once called her body. Heat crackled nearby. A conversation wove through the fire. A child’s sweaty body curled at her lap, chest rhythms of breathing, up and down, pressing against her. 'I didn’t want to believe it was happening again.

She knew what they thought was happening. She knew what they thought. But here’s what she saw. Once upon a time, there was a girlchild. A brand new girlchild, smiling. So innocent, so new. Her mama held her tightly, and she was safe. The end. After all, Jesus rose again, didn’t he? And his mama must have held him. Mother Mary in a teal robe, clinging to her child—Pietà turned beautiful. Restored to babe in arms. Bianca’s daughter had returned. Her Jubilee. And she wouldn’t let her go.

Miracles happen every day, her mother had said, if you know where to look, if you know HOW to look. Not through the microscope, mija. Through the kaleidoscope of your heart.

My godis frozen-mouth. She is get-out-of-this-town-or-hell-freezes-over. She is paycheckto paycheck. Each night when she goes to bed, my godkisses her kids’ clean faces, then, thanking herself, her own.

The last time I had a dick in my mouth I was dying alfalfa withered in rows unable to separate desire from pain There are poets for whom this throbbingis healing My Frida rail-impaled my chingona fighting for whole even after gangrene She loved her body though it betrayed

What I’m asking is will watching The Discovery Channel with my young black boy instead of the news coverage of the riot funerals riot arrests riot nothing changes riots be enough to keep him from harm?

The balding headstonesof the others—quarantined from their own mothers & sisters & daughters—I wondered if they, like us, were strangealloys of sadness & forgettingthe words to the songs.