there is a reason single flames are named tongues.
Layer cake of centuries:
sand mud
transmutate into shale and stone.
I wish a better present, but the past won’t allow it.
Something for your history, no?
The body can’t compete
with
siren
car horn
lawn mower
bombs
helicopter before the bombs
mouth ordering the bombs
I am all ears.
I am every tiny hammer, anvil,
and stirrup shattered.
I am all eyes, like a biblical angel,
like a spider —
I weep from every duct.
Amy M. Alvarez is the author of Makeshift Altar and the winner of the 2025 American Book Award and CariCon Poetry Prize. Born to Jamaican and Puerto Rican parents in New York, New York, her work focuses on race, ethnicity, gender, place, and social justice. Selected as one of 2022’s Best New Poets, her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Poetry Foundation, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships from CantoMundo, VONA, Macondo, the Virginia Creative Arts Center, and the Furious Flower Poetry Center. In 2022, she was inducted as an Affrilachian Poet. She has taught at public high schools in the Bronx, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts, and at West Virginia University. She currently teaches writing and literature at Boston College as an Associate Professor of the Practice.
