Back to Issue Two

I Am Fashioned from a Gourd by Alicia Elkort

I Am Fashioned from a Gourd

carved with an ordinary awl.

I am the bluest mountain

beyond the desert where Moses

wept. I am ribbed flaxen & sweet

peas dusting the air—

nine shooting stars transfixed

against a violent sky.

I am candles burning each Friday night,

stubborn and proud. Esther’s granddaughter

daughter of Edythe, great-granddaughter

of Rosalie and Anna. I am a shot

of whiskey before bed and a bicycle ride

Sunday morning while the city sleeps

beneath alabaster fog. I am one year

in a hospital bed as my father relearns

walking on polio-battled bones, a memory

that will carry him through his years.

I am the party where my parents met,

jazz musicians drumming through the Cold War.

I am a ballerina, a perfect arabesque

like silk, like humming.

I make landfall where New Mexico

and Russia converge on the axis—

sopapillas with honey and braided chiles

hanging in the larder, black tea

with a sugar cube on the tongue.

I am from the hope of immigrants

with nothing to lose but life.