In Memoriam

Denise Mungor

I can taste

the music in my mouth

The strums of the guitar

Taste like silver

The sky bleeds blue and

blushes terrible red

Like bleeding a rose–

Here the wars of my mind

Wind like the timeless

roads of purgatory

I kaleidoscope myself

Into a million fragments

That frey across the dimensions

I am as endless as the

As the blades of grass

That dance on the seabed

I see my family’s face

I carry a thousand generations

In the brooks of my blood

I hear the old crones croak

They yawn like the giants

They are, cracking the sky with

Their dead-white voices

In my sleep

I dream of the millennia of souls

That push their will through me

From out of Africa’s womb,

to the fangs of France, 

To the thighs of California

They roamed.