By Ashley Somwaru
who used to walk down to Skeldon market
a picture of two pigtails and a red dress
the only one we have before you came
to 165th street rolling your food cart over
the road, a body to crush
under a ton of steel
sometimes you point at CTown’s weekly ad
and ask me what a can of beans costs
your penmanship whited out so that you
will never know the curve of your name, you
will always be the soil
that grows other people
let me borrow your language full of empty
cans and letters, auntie, to show
you how they see us
Ashley Somwaru is an Indo-Caribbean woman who was born and raised in Queens, New York. She received an MFA in poetry from CUNY Queens College. Somwaru has published a chapbook with Ghostbird Press in 2021 titled, “Urgent \\ Where The Mind Goes \\ Scattered.” Previous work has been published in Angime, Kithe, Lammergeier, Newtown Literary, Solstice Magazine, VIDA Review, and elsewhere.