Poetry

i’m an alcoholic. a coke head. an aborter. bipolar and on a slight sedative. i’m jealous of ways other’s brilliance makes me feel small. i’m passive with peace and love. i’m distributable and often diabolical. i’m dying. i’ve died a million deaths in these last

This is evidence, like fingermarks crimping upper arms,
like the bruise on the cheek bearing the shape of his ring,
the zigzag grooved in the X-rays.

This morning, in tallish grass beside my car, a dirty baseball
sat like a runaway moon beside a rabbit working her athletic
jaws across the lawn with a typist’s frenzy for QWERTY

Between the decaying doublewide
and the beast maw
of development lies
this last remnant of soil like home,
grey-edged and drying against
the encroaching green, a fermenting
pumpkin patch caught
in permanent dusklight

Here, flown -over spring is empty
field of just -tilled earthskin, light brown
last year’s leftover stalks, cobs, leaves,

Spring means I have to go outside again
and pretend to like it, put on the yoke
of growth for growth’s sake, socialize in the
hard sun, eat with bees, shave and paint my toes.
The tyranny of good weather is here:

No one’s clear on how to live with wanting.
The dog snatches gloves from the table

I begin to pray for the world. Believe me
it’s involuntary—a lamp chain’s pulled,
my bulb filament glows….

etween tricks I play on myself to fall asleep
I imagine what it’d be like to spend a whole day
in bed, not with dread like right now as I pray
for rest before a morning alarm like napalm

I knew the price I’d pay
if I danced my soul for you.
Shined my shoes with oil
from the sunflowers we once grew.

When you carry a ghost
long enough, you make
a home for him
in your marrow.

for i royal black sabah lil gallish gal flashed
my baby sphinx butt on may 1st weighin in
at 3 pounds up from 2.5 just
2 weeks ago ohhhh how i bozoed

When I make sofrito with my mother’s hands I peel the garlic and then smash its teeth like someone unfulfilled. I chop the onions into small pieces of shattered dreams and shed not a tear for what could have been.

mixing with the trees’ exhalations, it’s why that cool
permeates the air under trees at twilight.
But sometimes a house just sits there, impervious

In reverse, the red ribbon on the gift box
loosens, it opens, the sterling silver charm

shaped like a trumpet, returns to the charm rack.
The earth above you floats clumsily,

someone cherished the tiny beasts,
sleek and defenseless:
the crocodile, the adder, the cat, the dog,
a couple of birds.

Puzzle pieces, each from a different set, end up with gaps to fill
with mind and whatnot. From afar they’re curlicues fluent in
longing–there’s too much to say about longing we’d better leave it

How delicious and fragile we humans look,
pacing the diving platform in a bikini
or board shorts, arms and legs

I want to be the woman flying
toward art, who prefers the surreal

painting over any man, even new love.

That day in the neighbor’s front yard it was so hot
everyone stripped shirtless, in cutoffs, shorts, knees

I like life enormously—

Yes, when it’s a big dog looking to catch
my eye and lean in heavily against me
with its thick hair, its petal soft ears,
and I like life when it doesn’t behave,

Weather flew across the field. Over the horizon the land tacked to a cloud. The field continued into night a far town lit.

if the tall tree died the absence
would be taller i hope the maple
lives but the tree guy says it

-for Jennifer Martelli

Even the morning word games mourn you.

TANGO]
the sound of copters rising from a distant field or if you were out
of range mistaken for wingbeats of mandarin ducks setting down

Bunion turned
Habit step
As men
Step vainly into men

When I travel I touch my passport often,
as if it was a talisman, or the foot of a rabbit

He sits in front of a wall of glass, and his glass, which was made of plastic, was already empty.

We talk about other things, but not class
in class. I think in class we don’t talk
about class because the university has

One, I imagine she’s in the throes of
writing her first graphic novel, this young
woman, a remarkable piece entitled New Tales

the year is nineteen ninety-nine
judge judy is playing
with my pre-rolls some group sings happy

back and forth
in an open car door

Blay, Yaba. “How the ‘One Drop Rule’ Became a Tool of White Supremacy.” LitHub, 22 Feb. 2001.1 CBC Radio. “Black Teen Shot in the Head After Knocking on the Wrong Door Doing ‘Exceptionally

The sun is off
In prayer
In breath abide
Words’ apogee

The second time I heard him play, he sat
facing his windows overlooking the river.

I close the door to my sky blue room.
To feel you there behind it.
The sky blue room is incomplete and imperfect.

collapsed star,
two am Navajo darkness and
waves of string-theory echo
blue sage branches,
canyon red arroyo – glitter pollen dust

They grasp the edges of the off-white parachute
in 1st-grade gym class, soles of their sneakers
peeling off, nursery rhymes rendered mute
like a poisoned pond emptied of frogs’ croaks.

You, standing on the disputed land.
Over there, with your ear to the sky.

What do you pray for when you go to bed at night?
Does the old muse of belonging visit you too, whispering?
Painting the promise of what could be behind your shut eyes, not yet asleep?

—after Psalm 130

The rabbi is sitting with me
on the floor, my hand
reaching for your
earlobe through
the sheet’s barrier—

Today, these tears are tulips, gnashing ego petals
lured gold, all raining around brown eyes.

Also, but I am weaker
than you, because you were enslaved.

But instead I’ll write about my sore throat.
Are they related? Some say, pains of the body
are feelings held on to by tissue and cell,
unexpressed like milk hardening in the breast

they told me to pray for him,
for his success. that doing otherwise
was like rooting against the pilot
while sitting on the plane—

Briefly, while I watch Lion King with my son
for the billionth time until I finally snap
it off. Enough.

My heart aches, and the same drowsy song begins
Ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum. Tree empties itself
into my beak. Tells me how people turn

Some of us are born blacklisted—don’t want work in the womanly arts. Others choose to wait and see. Here’s a gender song, gentle. A two song, a chain? O my small starlet sunk I apologize to your past future self, hosed down the drain of my most need, gurgling. I apologize to no-one else. The

We went to a school where most of our uncles became our fathers, the farther your father went, the more uncles you had. We were the fortunate ones, the boys who had uncles who helped us strum and string and sing along lonely guitars. Others weren’t so fortunate, they were the ones who forgot the

for Jeanne beloved friend   let us start here with the boxes   beneath the eaves in a red caftan   your garnets promised by Isaiah   in covenant with god a prayer for our mothers    four are the matriarchs   three the patriarchs   two the tablets left in the PM pill box one your ram’s horn   your bangle one

we were driving through the oil crisis. How long Ohio felt. Or was it Pennsylvania? Each rest stop a Stuckey’s after Stuckey’s. My cheek healing unhurried from an early summer dog bite. At The Holiday Inn we swam so much, the people hushed us. Sunrise was a pillow, mom’s fist sneaking under my head. It

For two years now I’ve bristled with memories of you. I pull them from their lair, fur sleek, nails sharp. They scrape me, lodge in the back of my throat. Tilt of chainsaw against log. BMW riding 132 to Percé. Last days with oxygen, neck gouged, cheeks pale. I am the keeper now, the one

Zini in February, dusty ochre and dry. Where the village & I fulfill ceremony prescribed. From sun up to sun down for days. Nursing akpeteshie, the men sit beneath a fruitless mango tree. But Goddesses cast in all shades of night Yoginis of their own Rite—Women wield elements in malasana. They cook and bear the

The whale is beached again,  Has he no sense  of direction? Is he clinically  depressed? Gulls  flap close and closer to his eyes,  inspecting  the vitreous humor. Sandpipers dance  on the strand,  annoying as sleep-deprived toddlers.  He will miss  the various colors of the seas,  the mating,  the krill cuisine, hunting  gigs, the sheer  clown

The origin of sound was my bare feet curling around blades of grass as I circled, ditch to ditch, waiting for the perfect, pious set of headlights to beam me into the beak of something that wouldn’t spit me out. The origin of heat is that night I spent in the cornfield. Shards of stalk,

A scientific theory used to describe abrupt evolutionary changes that create new species They say dinosaurs shrank to become birds. Locomotion forsaken for tree limbs and flight. Bird-hood is not a phase I am familiar with, tiny lifetimes between bristles to quills to filoplumes. The lines of any change are never neat. A spectacle of

Little Rock High School, 1957   Memory of course alters the facts, but what remains are shrieking voices, nails on chalkboard, siren shrills, mothers ready to hiss and claw. Our mother said we’d learn more that day watching TV in Brick Town, New Jersey than going to school.  But did she guess we’d learn how scary

You’ve surpassed your message quota for the month. May we recommend the Unlimited Option?   Unlimited plan – is Heaven – but comes at a hefty price – steals away those we love prisons them – in Paradise. I make my way – among the Living – tender electric currencies – value what can be

After bandaging blisters and taping arches, we bent our shoes in half, worked the toe boxes softened through repetition and sweat, stuffed the tips with matted wool, snuffed each foot inside, wrapped ribbons taut in pink X-es, knots tucked inside the ankles. Then to the rosin box, to grind pointes and heels against yellow powder in a crust of sticky crystals. Without rosin,

There are times when I miss it, throwing back shots with friends, bumpin’ that bumpin’ as Charli might say Feeling oceanic low, getting seraphic high, just to feel infinitely lower on those blurry nights, lighting the butt-end of cigarettes, crying in the passenger seat of Leo’s beater, remembering that thing I did when I was

That there is no end nor order. I have never seen myself like I have seen you. The mirror of the river, a forever witness. People, fields, loves passing by. The wall to keep out unwanted elements. People’s scrawling all over it – a bird, a broom, an eye, symbols for various isms, a heart.

I know there are more beautiful ways  to see motherhood, but standing at the display of glass apples, I think of the nicked skin, or the apple’s grey bruising. Imagine how the fruit fly,  parasitic to the orchard, finds herself an apple realizing its own perfection. Then, enter  her ovipositor. Thrust from the underside of

Limousine suite, covered in whitened frosting and sand castles, radio is off as we would like to hear the interstate speak. at this rate at this limousine speed we have caught hornet swarms in our mouth, and arroyos in our hands. and now I will dress in your moles, and in your appetites, in your

In heaven, Goya’s no longer deaf.  He hears Everything Velázquez tells him when they sit Together in one of those gardens the angels Maintain for the blessed who care more For conversation and deep-colored roses Than for divinity.  Velázquez is sad. There are no dogs to paint or war horses Or deer with magnificent antlers.

(as if that could contain her). Not a toy, Okaasan said. Kiyohime: who thrilled in my imagination when she danced—six hats cascading from her hand transforming from silk and gold brocade to scales that snaked around flirtations when I pillowed dragon’s fire when I painted face in oyster shell becoming ghastly when monked by stupid

My mom makes a croak like a big bullfrog in a bog. My dad, like a cat about to vomit. I make a sound like an arrow-shot doe collapsing, as the brown and once-living leaves embrace her in their scent. This is not the part of life where the dandelions first pop into color, but

Today, two teams tried to tackle taboo topics too turbulent to transcribe. The titillating, transcendental triceratops, tirelessly tries to triumph, teeth taken task to task tail to tail. Together they tried to tie the two toucans to the timber to tell them two tall tales, till treelike tutors touched the tender tension to take the

O mercy how it rolls and rolls, but a river is not the sea with its serpents and undulations tugging you under and beneath the self you swam from and the river is not a pond, that puddle of your soul exploded and stretched across tethered earth furrowed beside a farmhouse; it is not a

This week the closet is the new concern, her latest obsession is coat hangers. They are perfect, come five to a pack, shrink wrapped, sold online at Bed Bath and Beyond. Last week she was strict about her goldfish: gravel, gills, tank, chosen because they match. Joy and effort have entered a death match. Of

A crab leaves the barrel snapping your new Timberland. A family of laughter is the baritone for your one-footed prance until the shoe comes off. My dark eyes know you, your swag and all that was stolen to convince you you could thieve from every kind every kin except me. I’m the little girl who

a Golden Shovel of “poets in their bassinets” by Lucille Clifton   Finding arrowheads, fixing fractures, poets muscle through the memory of a tick embedded in the back of a childhood to release their dark parts: the empty bassinets, the redemption that doesn’t happen even in a dream. There are phone calls they remember a-

When he told me I throw like a girl, I became at age five a girl-girl, or rather girl became me, her rose-colored shame ribbon snaking from my emptied hand to cinch its bright bow at my neck, yet I also became not-a-girl as the shouldered fury lacking in my girl-pitch rose like a voice,

“To lives that thought their worshipping A too presumptuous Psalm”   How many times must I say, slant, slant, slant? Lightning, my dear. Will you be struck? Will you allow the graveyard fog to burn its chill down your spine, tap your shoulder into shiver and jump? The Psalm wants.  What will you give it,

because my sister hadn’t been home in a few years and hadn’t been bedside when our mother died of lung cancer and I wasn’t there either but had been there all day and had gone home for something to eat where after rice and chicken livers smothered in gravy with sliced onions and bell peppers

fall on someone—who might be drinking a glass of water, reading a book, or pondering last night’s dream. Then not— while back home in the gene pool, I’m lounging with the New York Times reading about two thousand pound bombs. I stand with Israel, so many neighbors say. How I felt that first time at

come to me corgis come to me from conquered vale mountain and stream oh the slaves the spices the silver and gold come see the kingdoms I have won for you leap and frolic and bark by my side come to me corgis come to me they do our bidding this grand biddy’s bidding oh

Introit  The word becomes flesh head first from the canal— introitus from the Latin— slick with the body’s sacred waters, vernix caseosa, down on head and shoulders if it’s early, slips into hands, gloved in white, or into water warm as the womb. The cord is cut; sex revealed, revered, disdained. Girl, at birth. Kyrie

I want the dark back, the bloody well of it, my face before the fire or lie alone on the cold stone and find a way to sleep awhile, wake clear and wander. Deborah Digges, “Write a Book a Year” The wrens have returned, a male making his rounds of possible nests. I moved the

In the movie, pioneers cross an arm of the Brazos and I think abrazos—how the river wraps wagons, waves children into the past, past parents whose visions of fertile pastures don’t include drought hardened soil unable to hold dead children or wind-maddened women. In one scene, prairie grasses strewn with treasures, too heavy to carry

Trapped in a full-body cast, both femurs broken, held together with steel pins, I read. I listen to my transistor radio, single earplug transporting Eight Days a Week until I know every note of every 1964 Beatles song. It’s hot on my bed so I teach myself to roll over, a baby, twisting, pushing the

I lie awake near dawn, tumbling through time, trying to order my years and snag from each a fragment. The Christmas Ash died. The Thanksgiving I was home to help my mother sort her life— and look for myself in flatland grays and browns, the plowed ground of our quarter on Slate Creek. And the

for Nien Cheng Write your autobiography, they said, everyone in the country has done it, and they handed me a roll of paper and returned me to my cell, where I watched the spider stumble across the floor and crawl under the cement toilet. The weather had turned cold. I’d spent months watching it diligently