Sara D. Rivera

 

Telephone Game

I spoke. You. Sound converted and delivered.
We smiled and spoke.

If we were closer we say when apart.

If I tell you my body is full of stone caves
you understand the sadness there.

Words on an indirect path. Tell me where
we’re going when we’re not going anywhere.

Mimic me: this is a type of game.
Mimic me: este es un tipo de juego.

Dime a donde vamos, cómo es que nunca
vamos a ningún sitio. Las palabras empiezan

a girar. Si te digo que tengo el cuerpo lleno de
zarzas entiendes que hablo de una tristeza.

Si estuviéramos juntos ay si estuviéramos juntos.

Una luz convertida se entrega en mi cuerpo. Yo hablo. Tú.
Hablamos y sonreímos.

 

Resuscitation

For a second jackrabbit prints on snow and you’re in the
frame again, lifting your arms to lower the sky for me.
On this side of Bridge Street we collect all the dead

sunflowers, cut rot from an amaryllis bulb
to end its dormancy.

Our box turtle wakes thin in spring. Asleep
all winter she witnessed

nothing. For a second small as a strawberry
all my dead are alive.

Sara Daniele Rivera is a Cuban/Peruvian artist, writer, translator, and educator from Albuquerque. Her poetry and fiction have been published in literary journals and anthologies. She was awarded a 2017 St. Botolph’s Emerging Artist Award and won the 2018 Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry. Her drawings, sculptures, and community-based installations focus on text-in-space as social intervention, and her public art projects are often developed in collaboration with youth.