from CANXONA

My grandfather Avi is buried in a glass box 
that looks 
out over the sea 

In the dream he comes to me
I think part of him resuscitated inside of me 

We both clicked our jaws the same
as if they were about to come unhinged 

In the back room he covers 
a table with different fabrics 
He is an examiner of cottons 
I am a market goer 

groves of oranges & tangerines
a bamboo shoot fern-lined perimeter 

My sister tells me 
to take down all the mirrors 
whenever I’m feeling sad 

(photo of an adobe church) 
The smell of wet dirt Iron fed crucibles 
A fistful of clay holstered and locked 

blues & oranges melted in our mouths 
red & purple colors 
we ate in the garden of edible flowers 

My father takes a piece 
of the bamboo perimeter 
and tries to forge 

me a flute

I follow drops of blood 
up the marble 
staircase 

a black rotary phone 

Japanese cartoons 

Like the palm of my hand
I can drive with my eyes closed
The long dirt road that leads up to C A N X O N A 

C A N meaning house
X O N A in vulgar: Vulva / Vagina / Cunt / dirty woman 

We grew up in the house 
of a dirty woman 

Mud clings to our boots 

Palimpsest 

Emma Gomis is a Catalan American poet, essayist, editor and researcher. She is the cofounder of Manifold Press. Her texts have been published in Denver Quarterly, The Berkeley Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and Asymptote among others.  In 2021 she cowrote a pamphlet of sonnets with Anne Waldman Goslings to Prophecy which was published by The Lune. She was selected by Patricia Spears Jones as The Poetry Project’s 2020 Brannan Poetry Prize winner. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Poetics from Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, where she was also a fellowship recipient, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in criticism and culture at the University of Cambridge.