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Volume IV, No. 1/November 2001
Up in the Air
Home is where I am,
within me.
– Alberto Sandoval, "Puerto Rican Identity Up in the Air"
Now that I am a middle child
the sky is older
set farther back
the ground below swollen,
as if beneath a glass.
I live in the house
between ground and sky.
I am a middle child
and my betweenness
is audible.
It dyes the color of my speech,
glistens when I sweat
through the acrobatics of daily living.
I am a middle child,
and to live here
I have lived many deaths.
Death now has a home in me
and now that I can see
the Earth beneath my feet, it too is
an island.
– Naomi Ayala
from Wild Animals on the Moon, Curbstone Press, 1997
