Christian Ruiz Berman, Kami#3, Para Jairo, 2017
Acrylic, oil, macaw feathers, chain, and laser cut wood on panel with artist frame
22 x 29”
Not the ghost of a rose.
Not the lily scissoring water
in its milk glass,
not the icy sidewalk
half a world from home,
but petals orange
and blue as butane,
blossoms scented with violence.
Each spring the bird of paradise
cuts my window I remember
the country I loved
in a country without love,
each blade of grass
greener in revision
so that jungle
bisecting the city
wasn’t the obsidian kingdom
I drove by in silence
but a brush stroke in high wind.
I once believed the mouth of a tiger:
province the lost inhabit.
Nothing populates memory.
I left the republic for a northern city.
I swallowed a river of stone.