Ethanol

The man in the south, near São Paulo, brown
and lean, in his late seventies, says it’s his bicycle—
he rides it every day, everywhere, around town

and the edge of the cane fields, that’s why his smile still
flashes in the sun—that and he doesn’t drink ethanol
anymore, as they once did as kids in the fields, a trial

by fire—this the interpreter with an air of Bolsonaro
about her tells us. Was she there though, by the field
that day? I can’t recall, but how else could we know

what was said? Maybe it was the owl—the fields
are full of them, they nest in burrows, pick off their prey
of rats, mice, rabbits—an owl that wielded

its mottled wings and wouldn’t look away
from Zak’s camera lens. We didn’t see the spell unfold
immediately, as we did at the terreiro candomblé

in Salvador, where we’d angered a god
who whipped from my finger a thick silver ring
then and there, my only heirloom, a ring that belonged

to my sister, who I hoped to lose and find in the wind
in the cane that bows and flurries in the fields.
Maybe that’s how we knew what was said, by the wind

and the songs it sang with the boys in the fields—
he was twelve, that man, a boy when he went to the fields.

Notes:

This poem is part of the folio “Freed Verse: A Reckoning of Black British Poets.” Read the rest of the folio in the September 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (September 2025)