When the Tides Held the Moon

by Venessa Vida Kelley

“Might not be so bad gettin’ outta here. Give you a chance to sort out how to stop survivin’ and live for a change.

The sun has yet to douse behind the human-made mountains they call the City,

“What turns your thoughts to so distant a place?” “It lives in my thoughts, not as a place, but as the time when last I saw your spirit untroubled,”

The poetry of the peasant class,”

If it’s where I make my bed and earn my bread, I make it my business to know where my feet stand. Don’t you?” “I stopped feeling my feet back on Flatbush Avenue.”

Daylight changed shifts with the night,

each night in the tank with Río felt like being consecrated by forty tons of holy water.