National Poetry Month Day 17: Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

Celebrate National Poetry Month with new poems daily, illustrating a variety of voices and perspectives in contemporary poetry.

I IDENTIFY AS

A flicker of self;
A lightning
Bolt of emotion;

A slip into a storm;
Cleaner
Than an empty

Hole;
Blue tongue pressed;
Water swigged;

Memory.
I require space
To swallow

What has happened to me
And convert it into
Breast and ass

Tissue.
I will be beautiful
In my own language.

I will be
More than a self
And less than a person.

What will echo will depend
On not what I say
But how

The folds of my throat
Quiver.
I slept through every

Childhood earthquake
So I never learned how
To stand in a doorway

Comfortably.
A crack in a wall is
Its own form of light.

A door is
In many ways
A wall.

***

Photograph of Joshua Jennifer Espinoza courtesy of Joshua Jennifer Espinoza.