Irène Mathieu

OBSERVATION IN A SMALL COUNTRY

a braided girl bounces into
a corner store that smells like garbage.
salsa gushes in the sunlight
plays under her heels
and the radio announcer asks
are you a sex addict?
sex addiction is a serious disease.

things are close together here –
trauma and innocence
are neighbors –
dancing and bullets
share afternoon coffee –
a virgin beach once
slept with a gold mine.

the salsa flares and
flies land on green bananas.
when what ripens splits to rot
the memory of sunlight will be
excruciating.

THE LAW OF CONSERVATION OF LOVE

the sheets of rain that passed over me
five minutes apart
on a tropical beach once:

the same sudden submersion
understanding is when it
ambushes me
the same brightening sun
between each water-curtain

the growing knowledge
that no raindrop will ever
leave this world.

Irène Mathieu is a pediatrician and writer based in Philadelphia. She is the 2016 winner of the Bob Kaufman Poetry Prize and author of the galaxy of origins (dancing girl press & studio, 2014) and orogeny (Trembling Pillow Press, forthcoming). Her poetry, prose, and photography can be found in The Caribbean Writer, The Lindenwood Review, Muzzle Magazine, qarrtsiluni, Extract(s), Diverse Voices Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Callaloo Journal, Jet Fuel Review, Lime Hawk and elsewhere. Irène has been a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Callaloo fellow, and a Fulbright scholar.