‘Face to Face’

Aaron Gonzalez is a photographer out of Southern California that focuses on landscape and portraits.

Face to Face

My father tells me that crows never forget a face,
never forget a grudge–
never forget a boy who climbed into a mango tree
every year when yellow-green skin blushed pale red.
His hands grabbing for ripened fruit,
hands scarred by generations upon
generations of talons.

Noisy shadows call out to each other:
This one swings on the lower branches like a monkey when the sun is high.
This one brings a cloud of gray smoke, the stench of burning plants rising into the canopy.
This one sits at the edge of the roof, face in hands, and doesn’t leave until dark.

And this is one who hoists himself into our midst though he does not have wings,
who dares to come near our nests when the fruit grows heavy and sweet.

That boy will never forget the descending horde,
cacophonous cries, beating wings, beaks scraping against skin.
Mango tree shrouded in black
feathers bristling when he appears on the roof,
even with hands tucked behind his back;
his peace offering never to be accepted,
their declaration of war never to be rescinded.

His daughter will sit by a window in the old house he was born in
long after he has left it,
her hands pressed against the panes, breath fogging the glass
like the mist that hangs low over the yard in the morning.
And a low, creaking note will be the prelude
to the dark bird that clumsily perches on the narrow windowsill.

Tilting its glossy head at her, blinking its eyes like ink pools,
clacking its beak as she tilts her head in return.
This one has that one’s eyes. Not his hair, but his nose–
It will peck the glass to no avail,
a face never forgotten,
mango tree long gone.

Tirna Iqbal is a new poet from Connecticut, currently based in Boston, Massachusetts. Her work has not been published before.