"Under a Soprano Sky" by Sonia Sanchez

My creative writing students have been working on integrating sound devices into their poetry. Sonia Sanchez (born Wilsonia Benita Driver) is a great example of a poet who creates rhythm with subtle sound devices. My personal favorite sound repetition in this poem occurs in the lines: "...I wooed the world/ with thumbs/ while yo-yos hummed." The repeated sounds in those lines are continued in the following lines as well. Artfully done.


Under a Soprano Sky 
by Sonia Sanchez


once i lived on pillars in a green house 
boarded by lilacs that rocked voices into weeds. 
i bled an owl's blood 
shredding the grass until i 
rocked in a choir of worms. 
obscene with hands, i wooed the world 
with thumbs 
while yo-yos hummed. 
was it an unborn lacquer i peeled? 
the woods, tall as waves, sang in mixed 
tongues that loosened the scalp 
and my bones wrapped in white dust 
returned to echo in my thighs. 

i hear a pulse wandering somewhere 
on vague embankments. 
O are my hands breathing? I cannot smell the nerves. 
i saw the sun 
ripening green stones for fields. 
O have my eyes run down? i cannot taste my birth. 

2. 

now as i move, mouth quivering with silks 
my skin runs soft with eyes. 
descending into my legs, i follow obscure birds 
purchasing orthopedic wings. 
the air is late this summer. 

i peel the spine and flood 
the earth with adolescence. 
O who will pump these breasts? I cannot waltz my tongue. 

under a soprano sky, a woman sings, 
lovely as chandeliers. 




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