We knew it was a poem because our teeth

caught on its edges and every sound we had never heard

bounced off our ear drums. We knew a poet

had written those words because when we pressed

our hands to the pages our fingers

glowed and throbbed and turned the color

of shooting stars. We knew we were reciting a poem

because our mouths tasted war, coconuts, 

rivers, city cats, hurricanes in foreign countries

and bird songs, and we rolled the flavors inside us,

letting them fall into our stomaches, 

absorbed like a monk taking in silence.

We knew this poem was for us because it opened wide

on our desks and let loose the smell of dew,

the stench of bad cheese, the perfume of events

from long ago that we'd only read about before

in history books. We knew that the paper given to us

by that woman we had just met—a visiting poet—

was a poem because when we looked at it,

it was nothing we had ever seen before,

and as we looked closer and the woman told us

that we, too, could write poems, the poem on the pages

moved around like cows dancing,

the spaces on the page became secret tunnels,

and when the words moved, we moved,

and then we wanted more.