|
dancing girl press, 2014
$7.00 |
Jasmine Nikki “Nikay” C. Paredes was born and raised in Cebu City, Philippines.
She received a BFA in Creative Writing from Ateneo de Manila University and an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College.
This Poem is a Mouth
When I sing
of gas-lit lamps, dry anise
over kindling husks, idioms
berthed on seven thousand islands,
I am fleshing out an archipelago
for you—
I am reciting creation
from memory:
how the first man and woman hollowed
from a single stalk of bamboo.
When I place you
between my lips, you will sing
of how coconuts remind you of the nipples of a woman—
your voice
will intimate a vine and scale a city
glossed in rain. I ripen
and you
subtle into song.