Hover

above us there are no helicopters
not like when the wind
smelled like california soot
and every hour sirens wove
their hair into ours and sung
names to enchant cacophony
say their names and we were home
your sister newborn in my arms
protecting her life a protest

weeks before, each time a plane
scored the berkeley sky in white
you would point up
say mamma because i am always
in the sky even when my skin
burns in the sun next to yours
how my eyes leak with storms
you cannot yet name
we stand in unhinged weather

there are no helicopters today
you bang on a wheelbarrow
with dried bamboo stalks as drum sticks
and lift your toddler throat up to shout
‘cotto! over and over again
a screamo chorus
lyrics perfectly formed to your ears
i nod only yes
and keep beat

at the people’s park
marchers assemble
with banners of i can’t breathe
san pablo, i can hear
the horns of a car parade
inside the mourners shout behind masks
from open windows
while a virus flies around us all
pandemic in crown
and white

surrounded by fences
i can keep you safe
and breathing
until i can’t
every door has the threat of splinter

there are no helicopters today
‘cotto you yell

somewhere they descend
somewhere a body hangs
halfway between metal and earth

---

Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia. She is the author of Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate and the chapbooks profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She has received fellowships and residencies with Cave Canem, The Obsidian Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center, among others. She is a member of the SF Writers Grotto and the Carolina African American Writers Collective. She also is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts, which has published over 900 Latinx voices in its history. She is an emerging visual artist and digital archivist, particularly with StoryJoy, which she co-founded with her mother, Dr. Norma Thomas. She is the lead coordinator for Nomadic Press in Philadelphia and a senior researcher and editor on various grants in education and literature. Find her on all the platforms @rainaleon.