You And I Are Disappearing
by Yusef Komunyakaa
The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning inside my head. At daybreak
she burns like a piece of paper.
She burns like foxfire in a thigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames dances around her
at dusk.
We stand with our hands
hanging at our sides,
while she burns
like a sack of dry ice.
She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker's cigar,
silent as quicksilver.
A tiger under a rainbow
at nightfall.
at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rain forest.
She rises like dragonsmoke
to my nostrils.
She burns like a burning bush
driven by a godawful wind.
I very much enjoyed the repetition of "she burns" because it becomes clear that the narrator is seeing this, trying to analyze what this other worldly thing is by comparing it to things they know. My favorite line is "she glows like the fat tip of a banker's cigar", mostly because it's a very clear image I get from it. It's a very good poem by a very interesting poet. I was looking up information about his writing and it looks like some of his inspirations come from the time period before the Civil Rights movement here in the United States and I can completely see how this poem relates to that and the awful acts done by white supremacy groups.
Well, if you have any thoughts about this poem you want to share please share them in the comments. I would really like this to be a more two way conversation because poetry is very different for every person who reads it. The way I read it isn't the only way to understand this poem. Tell me what you think about today's poem down below...
