Three Poems by Ingrid Alva

War, Pearl like a Soul, dawn

War 

Metal wavers in the heat like courage. 
The soldiers split an orange this morning—running 
their thumbs between the flesh and rind like a 
butcher’s fist inside a calf, 
clearing pith from fruit. 
They wish for the rain of their boyhoods; 
warm, sweet kisses from the girl. 
Instead metal glints in the sun like fangs, 
Grinning guns blind the eyes of warriors. 
In their lungs linger traces of smoke and 
acrid sweat; it’s the same smell all over 
when they bend their knees and retch.



Pearl like a Soul 

How old is a grain of sand? 
How much older 
   ages 
than suburbs snaking like sutures or coiling 
like the mouth of the wind 
   ages 
which has savored the deepest strata of the oldest oceans 
even as it buried them. 
   ages. 

How old is a soul? 
How long has it been 
   bodies tearing bodies 
in such friction with the universe 
that stars began 
enveloping the irritant 
   drowning bodies birthing bodies 
in surface within surface over surface.



dawn 

glistening blades— 
an ocean 
of suspended growth. 

blue fingers— 
an absence 
grasping the land. 

feeble veil 
preserving the 
frost; light surrounding.