issue 49, 2011
Migration
Summer leaves for South America
taking heat and hummingbirds
and the last good tomato.
I asked for inevitable changes
because I wanted gratification and because
the lavender plant would not grow—
the whole damn garden
was a failure. I would like to go south
to look for green violetears
and where my ruby throat
is wintering.
The day I left for Argentina,
moonlight found its way
into the airport,
and I became a lake.
————
Author’s Statement — The year I spent in Argentina left me much time to reflect on the years that preceded it as well as the immediate moments before leaving. At the time, I had felt cosmopolitan, on the cusp of every worthwhile adventure. But in retrospect that moment took on sad tones. Somehow I didn't remember experiencing that leavetaking so much as imagined myself in it, as if in that moment I had become all reflection. The poem, though, takes place after returning from Argentina. Violetears are native to Mexico and Central America, which means the speaker is already hankering after a new departure, imagining (yet again) that a change of continent will bring about an elusive fulfillment.
Jasmine V. Bailey is the author of the chapbook Sleep and What Precedes It and the book-length collections Alexandria, Disappeared, and That Salt on the Tongue to Say Mangrove, a translation of Silvina López Medin's Esa sal en la lengua para decir manglar. She is the winner of the Laurence Goldstein Prize, the Vandermey Nonfiction Prize, and has held fellowships from Colgate University, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Fulbright Program.