after Toni Morrison
Jerusalem glints in the gloaming;
Once more I own the rooftops of the world.
Like a candle flame he was, then wasn’t.
I hear or imagine his sigh. I dip one innocent foot
into the fiery, golden pool.
Eyes rise like redolent smoke.
Hungry doesn’t begin to describe.
Who can tell the shape and weight of loneliness?
Gold, grit, glossolalia.
No opening to new gods after, for
heaven owes me this one thing.
I was not perfect, Lord knows.
I needed a center to know my own circumference.
Unmoor everything around me to grieve;
The cost of unraveling all mine to pay.
There’s not a man in this world I would die for,
including the Lord.
I’d burn the whole world for my son.
Hana Meron (she/her) is an Ethiopian-American storyteller, writer, and joy-chaser based in Albuquerque, NM. She is a 2022 Hurston/Wright Fellow in Poetry, a 2023 VONA Fellow in Poetry, and a 2023 Poetry Fellow of The Watering Hole. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in EcoTheo Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Transition, and Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (LOATAD). Hana holds a B.A. from Harvard University and is a current MFA candidate in Poetry at Pacific University Oregon. Find Hana on Substack (Kaleidoscope Black) or on her website hanameronpoetry.com.
