HERE, MY PHOTO OF YOU

VICKIE VÉRTIZ

For Shirin Neshat and Los Angeles

You are nearly smiling. I apologize: I don’t have a violin to accompany me

I have tubas, snare drums, and men declaring seduction through their noses It was time to go when the ocean herself took me by the legs and tumbled my ass out onto the shore. And now we are back, to the beach where this all began — there are so many ways to go home again

Let it come to you in the atoms of rosewater. In the turmeric of the tongue. Crumbled over firozeh and the sweetness of your son’s hands

Here are the waves: blue-green that swell and never crash They grow and grow, passing you from one hand to the next until you are in the center of the sea We know what it’s like not to go home. Neither here nor there, we made home in the middle. What is madness but another way to see the world To survive that which otherwise kills us on the inside and in real life

What is madness but the way we crack misogyny with the butt of a rifle