Earth Curriculum

Architecture in the harp 
of the heart. I make my hands 
into watering cans. A friend 
cooks Condolence Lasagna. 
A neighbor neighbors 
her elder. Each day, the world asks 
to be born. Each day, the world 
wants to know who will mother 
the world. As I write this, garden ants 
snatch legs up my arms. Could I love you 
better? I whisper, my mouth sloppy 
as noodles. Somewhere, Eve 
names the first animal. Everywhere else,
earth begins to eject us. 
Talk quietly, a planet is trying to die. 
Hope isn’t something you get by collection 
of evidence, my teacher says, 
her front two teeth missing. 
You choose to reach in, drag hope 
from the bag. I listen to rain
land in the cupped ears 
of flowers. O Mystery, 
O Tunnel of What.

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Mónica Gomery is the author of two poetry collections: Might Kindred, winner of the Prairie Schooner/Raz-Shumaker Book Prize (University of Nebraska Press, 2022), and Here is the Night and the Night on the Road (Cooper Dillon Books, 2018). Her work has been awarded the 2024 Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize, Palette Poetry’s Sappho Prize for Women Poets, and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center and Sundress Academy of the Arts. Her poems appear most recently in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry Northwest, West Branch, and on The Slowdown podcast. A queer Venezuelan American poet and rabbi, she works at Kol Tzedek Synagogue in Philadelphia, and is a member of Rabbis for Ceasefire.