OPEN-BRAIN SURGERY

ode 2 melissa lozada-oliva

she writes poems and sends them to the universe through her gapped teeth / and i think just the syllables in her name / i think the very hyphen separating mother from father / lozada from oliva / i think the vowels and the consonants and the rearrangement of twenty six letters that breathed life into her living body are / already lyrical, already intrinsically poetic / already poetry alive / before she even opens the rest of her magic mouth / from which what is good and true and mean and true and hers and true comes out / if i were to write a poem about her / which i cannot because / to write poetry about a woman is to be like everyone else and / this isn't poetry / this is celebration / and because / to make words kneel and praise woman is to be like all the other sullied and pink faithful and / there is no church at this party / and i am no poet / i'm just a girl who likes to celebrate / –if i were to write a poem about melissa lozada-oliva / every sentence would start with her name / a nine beat prelude before the big crescendo / hey, melissa lozada-oliva is– / and everyone's either already disengaged, already checked their ears out and left them at the door / oh / this about her / i don't even know her / nobody even knows her / because we all know that what we know is all there is to know and all that has ever been known / because if a star explodes and no galaxy is there to form as a result / did the star even shine in the first place?– / because of this understanding / some can afford to be deaf / but for others / others / they hold in the soles of their feet the knowledge that / every brown girl a star / and belonging to every star is the ability to nova / they just want to be the lucky galaxy born from the random strike / of one star's holy electric wave / and so they listen while i read the poem that i didn't write about / Melissa Lozada-Oliva / who doesn't know i exist / who shouldn't know i exist because / there's no galaxy holding eight planets and millions of things between its teeth / not even a moon glowing in the sky to say i was even born but / she speaks her poems into the universe through her gap teeth / and the universe hears her voice. / i hear it too. / and all i know is that we all know that / that has to mean something.