False Spring

Sarah, I am thinking of you

because it is still bitter cold in March

and because we are reading Lorca in class this week

even though I never read the Lorca you gave me

and I never called you Sarah in all the years I’ve known you

and I never learned Spanish

It is not spring time in Brooklyn

There are no crocuses

and there is no sweet warm breeze humming around the tourists

and the Latin class on the Prominade

Look! There is the bridge and the elephants

where it would still be cold because of the wind

so for now I will just imagine hot hard knees

and all this new grass digging into my back

Sarah, I spend time imagining that you have created your own blood line

of queer women in leather jackets who do not know how not to be good

all sitting together on the branches of some tree

folding our poetry into seedpods we toss to the ground

this tree will be forever be immortalized because

your mom’s book was mentioned in the pilot of The L Word

and so every time a lesbian tries terribly to flirt

our names will be silently invoked, and we will never die

and when it is July

and we are trying to get to Riis Beach by counting train cars

at Utica Avenue so we can all get on in the same place

and somehow, we are all there because of you

the subway turns into that small dream after you’ve woken up

and can feel the sun on your eyes

because all you can see is water as the train crosses the broad channel

and it looks like our city if it just never stopped raining

Sarah Moon, I held your baby this past summer

I took her to see the scary geese and the swans with black eyes by the lake in Prospect Park

and she laughed when they yelled at each other and was not afraid

even though she got heat rash and fussed in the stroller on the way back

and as I pushed her on the swing, she flared her tiny nostrils

and smelled the thin layer of melting rubber under my sandals

and the sunscreen sweat sheen of the kids running in the sprinkler

and the tender red burn of someone’s thighs on the metal slide

and illegal charcoal grill corn

and the goose shit by the lake

she knew that the sun and this city belong to her

and that the warmth is her heritage

Sofiy Inck