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the sky

doesn’t know her reasons

 

little does it matter the transition

how high the fingerprints

who offers who seeks

little does it matter the prediction

 

the immediate future

is keen:

 

the knights no longer

can be counted

 

yesterday

I read the sky

primitive questions within

the black smoke infested

my bones

and I strive to know

holding onto utopias

 

for how long will

the ligaments last if

in this city

nobody flees

 

everyone expects for the time

 

he comes in uniform in decrees

busts and statues and also comes

when all is clear

for we live under

eviction

 

visions fall

as threatened

and the sky

doesn’t know her reasons

 

but I

I reached the border

of every word:

where everything binds lone

every definition

spreads

 

yesterday

I gathered the letters

with constellated rebellions

 

I sew on my fist

a dark tempest

 

and the sky gazed back

answering

 

this way

who knows



Jarid Arraes was born in Juazeiro de Norte, in the Cariri region of Ceará, in 1991. Writer, cordelista, and poet, she is the author of Redemoinho em dia quente (Whirlwind on a Torrid Day), Um buraco com meu nome (A Hole that Carries My Name), As lendas de Dandara (Legends of Dandara), and Heroínas Negras Brasileiras (Black Brazilian Heroines). Curator of the literary imprint Ferina, she currently lives in São Paulo, where she founded the Clube da Escrita Para Mulheres (Writing Club for Women). She has published over seventy chapbooks.
Current Issue
12 May 2025

You saw her for the first time at your front door, like she wanted to sell you something or convert you. She had light hair and dark eyes, and she was wearing fatigues, which was the only way you knew that your panicked prayers of the last few minutes had not come true. “Don’t freak out,” she said. “I’m you. From—uh, let’s just say from the future. Can I come inside?”
Time will not return to you as it was.
The verdant hills they whispered of this man so apt to sin / chimney smoke was pure as mountain snow compared to him.
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