Poetry

Why not ask if her quizzical smile, aloof              plain              timeless, is not a blade, pointed at the one who dares attempt to capture her? The so-called “master” who speaks to the canvas as if she were not in the room. Perhaps, she has

Someday I may learn my lemons, resist the marigold’s musky dirge, for I have this man who drags his feet through piles of rotting banana peels, residue of strict smoothies too thick for punchlines. Too often he trudges back into the dark forest with ocher pigment smudged on his forehead and cheeks to hunt for

Turkish smugglers caught him in the wild and trapped him in a veiled cage, hung in a cafe. Deprived of light, the goldfinch mourned, his song a prayer of lament. Sorrow breeds melodies. Pipe smoke wafted through the room. The men meditated; they puffed nostalgic rings into the air. The goldfinches’ plaintive song lingered and

There’s a hole in this poem, a hole where all the usual ways I know to write a poem are stuffed to block the cold wind of the unexpected, a hole that allows the loud world to decide which portion of itself to poke through and require me to describe it or address it, a

Not unafraid of the Taliban takeover. Waiting for what happens through the bars and veils. What about the whale that washed up on the private beach? They couldn’t find anyone to relieve them of the stench. Still we smiled at the red boots on the big furry dog, turned our heads away from the man

Tonight, I realize I am more invisible than I thought It may have been my fault, just like my people’s Maybe my kindness settled steadily like a pond Awaiting pebbles for ripples instead of bloodshed Or maybe I held in my wild upsurging cries Unlike the rocky beaches of Liberia’s shore Where saltwater banged its

But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. —Moby Dick I’m sitting by the pond where

After Alice Walker  Glory! Glory! Glory! when Breonna Taylor did not walk back out of her apartment, i found refuge in instagram thread of videos where Black people are full of joy. come, let  me show you a sanctuary made of deep dimples and gummed smiles.in the first video, i remember the forgotten humanity in

Her body shaking, she raises her ankle up to her waist, palm up palm down, arms vibrating bangles to the elbow. This bank teller turned devi who swallows flames, takes the soot from her mouth and rubs it into foreheads. Sticking her blackened tongue out, she’ll start searching for men to gather at her feet.

I like to watch my nephew walk in crowded airport terminals, outdoor shopping malls, movie theater lobbies. He’s unaware of the stares he gets as he passes by butch boys, garish girls, libidinous couples. Seventeen and unconcerned with open admiration, open desire, he doesn’t seem to see what I can’t miss; and I miss it—those

                     –after the 1967 Arthur Penn film  Their penance—not yet exacted— Warm wind, from the open windows of the pulled-over canary-yellow Model A Ford. Clyde flipping the radio dial. Static. Insects. Chirping. His shit-eating smile. Silence sparking through sunlight— but for a rush of starlings entrained with the dapple-lit couple as if—like the fiddlers and

 of my pickaxe, the arc it formed at the crossing you and I were sent to fix—the road cratered on both sides of the tracks, wallowed out by trucks loaded with wheat—  if I could follow my pick’s shadow slicing toward your shadow— dark and wild, gathering weight and speed in the bright June air—and

I The client fights his gag                     begs me to stop. He’s forgotten his word                      the one he chose. I never had a word.                             His agony blooms & sweetens like a four o’clock flower.                  Another afternoon of violence more cries of never-enough.   II The tree outside my window              leans left, shaped by the wind of

The men mow the grass in the small park, the morning sun fanning out like a large searchlight. I sit at my desk and mow down an entire poem, nothing to save no matter how diligent the effort.    

When asked the date of their return in spring, google provides baseball timetables. In a May snowstorm, a male grasps the tine of the hummingbird feeder with prehistoric feet. His wife, yellow-chested to his orange, builds her pouch of a nest in a high tree, ejecting eggs of parasitic cowbirds. In spring twenty years ago,

What does one do to protest when one is Black and woman in city sandy white and military and lonely? My lover, like Yahweh, is prone to the hyperbolic— never leaving nor forsaking, his anger always just and provoked. But he is numb and unmoved this lynching season. I am unsure of my capacity to

A Nativity scene carved in granite. ** The bullfrog swells, pauses, holds his song like a brass paten beneath white jowls. ** This penny on the sidewalk you can never pick up, no matter how long you let your nails grow. Could be a fluke of gravity, could be glue, could be a magic intended

I look through the water into the sink’s belly at the leftovers from lunch: chicken necks, fat, and skin. Yesterday, I stood in front of the mirror, touched my neck, wondered where the slit would be if I was in the slaughterhouse, tracing my veins as steam filled my throat. I am thin, my neck

when she died, i might have been eating churros out of a white paper bag licking the cinnamon sugar crumbs from my fingers and the corners of my            cherry mouth, she called it or i might have been sitting in front of our family computer listening to a song about nightswimming           or         stolen hearts and        

Let’s untwist to 2003: My aunt slams a pair of size fourteen Skechers at my feet. They are large and lumpy like the Appalachian Mountains Boy, you betta wear these shoes I bought you. You can’t be worrying about what people say at that school about your feet looking big. Betta man up!  Now swing

From the Styx memory foam a girl stems, fumbling to get why in the coil of what. Every what twisting for its scaled tail. From Thetis’s wedding to gravity’s threshold, the girl travels, the world unhinged like a door drowning in its frame. Snakes skinned alive too learn their bodies to be cartographic loops. Apple,

of a bed birthmarked with espresso spills & stairs stacked up like well-thumbed field books & taxis straying out of traffic takes over the longer night ahead where you’re carried into his bedroom & placed like a finger in another woman where earthworms drown on your watch & a courtyard David lifts the blade of

You’re walking downtown, thinking maybe you do miss the costume, the stupid codename, the old headquarters-turned-Bank of America, when the white guy bumps into the woman in front of you, and is off with her purse. You give chase, of course. It’s easy enough to catch him and pin him against the wall / punch

Satori can surge upon you on the subway, lectured Dr. Tufail in Intro Zen. The mire gives us the very substance of art, goes Lorca’s Play and Theory of the Duende. A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom, reflected Little Richard in a Macon Greyhound terminal’s greasy spoon, up to his biceps in Georgia suds, boss- man piling on pot atop

Above the boulevards of sweat where the kids     are gathering again at the back     of a public bus to plan     the resurrection     of laughter an old woman    on a bench    slides both pink shoes     off her feet at the beginning of spring so she can sit    a while longer and look   at

              for my great uncles Mamerto, Nicasio, Prudenci Llanes who were hanged by the U.S. military for their armed resistance against the American occupation of the Philippines Who am I?               I slide my body          Into your body                         all my weight yours          I even place the gnawed peach pits of my ankles into

A golden shovel after Suheir Hammad   A hummingbird lavishes the lilac on the first morning I am by myself and the open window ushers in decanted perfume, sea, rain on the brink of falling. What slipshape prayers a woman must make of her body. To write my way out of the stories of war

The officer is kneeling on a man’s neck with the full weight of functional eardrums. When the audience begs for mercy, when he knows it is thoroughly engrossed, he shifts his weight a little, for effect, makes eye contact and holds it— what command he displays of this inheritance. Note the capacity for illusion, how

To Ziad Khaddash   I If you see me drowning, do not throw me a life buoy. Throw me a fish. She swims better than me.   II If I see a fish drowning on the seashore, I won’t put her back in the water. We will go together to a vegan restaurant. She’ll have

The sun rises and moves around. It sets to visit other places. And we, we are looking for Palestine. The birds wake up and look for food. They chirp on the blossoming trees, laden with fruit, with peaches, apples, apricots, and oranges. And we, we are looking for Palestine. The sea waves lap against the

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue.

  soundtrack: feat. phatkat, j dilla make it spare stark & simple. make this mark, not too clean make it crack static & pop the sound equivalent  of  rough.  feel  every  bump.  texture  this  landscape  you  map  it  i  ride surface glide each moment. it’s all action. you built this up. make it move something

—for Adlaw, after Anastacia-Renee / after Kamau Brathwaite, with listening to Honor Ford-Smith, Aracelis Girmay, M. NourbeSe Philip, Roger Guenveur Smith, and Christian Campbell / after Jake Eduardo Vermaas / for Julay The circle glows around you every time you first begin. The remembering, kapwa, the circle. I remember “Right On for the Darkness” was

The air in North Carolina demands you to breathe deep, a challenge for the body to stall, the quickness in its blood. There is no rushing here only time birthing more time, there is abundance. A surmounting wealth of space, begging you to see it spread for miles. The dirt caves in ditches in front

Sometimes, when my joints pop, a woman appears and wants to talk to me. No matter how carefully l move, these women want to use their tongues. We all know that the dead can’t speak, but some can shake rice in a tin sieve. A poet told me the first tambourine was formed in Italian

Your chest is a jug of orange juice,  a gasoline pump,  and this prayer is lazy, just as it should be.  You rise  as if it were for you (and maybe  it is).  Your legs are now the rhinestone in the navel of a belly dancer  as a pair of diamonds watch on,  gaze locked,

Alpheaus L. Parnell, black British R.A.F. pilot, 1943-1946  In war there are two kinds of soldiers, my dad said: those who fight for a paycheck, and those who would rise for a cause. Be very afraid  of the second one—too much to prove. My Jamaica-bred dad swapped crop dusters for Mosquitoes. There was one kind

1 In a tree — a child In a blooming cherry tree — a childin a white gown White on whitein the night —a child, warm from sleep Climb a cherry treesaid the voicein the night All alone in a treein a globe of white Her house on fireshadows flutteringbursts of light, shouts Be with

Alfalfa & cloves & the smell of cinnamon coat your skin like fur, the sweat new & not spoiled the condensation of the canvas water bag far off alongside the cattle-truck, steers complaining in their pen your work a panic to keep up, the orbit of hay a form of forever your father shoulders hay

I sit at a table dodging plates as they whirl top speed around a room. A plate twirler drops wire on my head. My right hand clenches emptiness when I awake. A therapist friend asks about the dream. I tell her first cancer then surgery to excise. Then chemo, then infection, then clot… Another dream

asked, splutters, then gasps, hacks, his hand, index finger held up, a moment, it says, for he can’t catch his breath, is bent over, shoulders, head, neck jerking with the effort, fist at his mouth as if yanking a fishing line, its hook sunk deep in a branch of his wet lungs, his eyes shut tight

I like dipping my hands in the metal bowls of water & making everything I touch holy. Holy forehead, holy chest, holy lips. I am too old to sleep through sermon, too young to listen. Holy pew. Holy basket for offering. My grandmother passes soft mints to busy our mouths. Not busy enough. Holy sweet.

Bodies matter, the way they break open, the way fluids spill. In my dream she stands at the foot of my bed wearing a half-smile, her nose twitching, her hands holding a wine opener. Say her name.  She lies on top of me on the white couch in the living room watching Breaking Bad; the

A single-celled organism has learned to distill toxins to a slow drip of the one it needs, as how the wolf boy learned to live without human love or language, how the widow lives in loss, cannot throw away the hair in the brush, keeps it in a small lacquered box, how in a house

—after Peter Brueghel Why a tree except the world sustains? The harvesters’ clean whites so far from town. Like fountains, water drops of grass heads. Like postscript, endless roads through Flanders. Close up, men like lapel buttons through haloes, mending, mending. Like snakeskins, white shirts against gold. The maze leads, panoramic, to the earth’s shelf

  needs the soil and the soil needs the grass, the way the candle needs the wick and the wick needs the candle. Yes to the way the lion and the buck need one another, and the bluebird the caterpillar. To the ocean that needs a shore for its waves. Yes to the cymbals for

  Does my roommate have a fever? (    ) I hope I’ll get to die of my cancer. Long enough not to die alone. (    ) Will I see my brother? (    ) Wondering how my mother. My mother. My phone number. I know we spoke. This morning but. She can’t. Should I? We should.

Whole years have passed with me in a state of graceless longing, a desire to be sanctified: the kind of woman who can order a crumb-topped buttered muffin, bursting with hot blueberries, sit & pick at it, barely chewing, barely tasting that deconstructed cake. Taking it slow. I know, this me nods to the man

An overland route traveled upon— leaving hoof marks and a swale on the land   cattle— bovine animals with four feet, esp. domesticated members of the genus Bos, as cows and steers Middle English catel, from Anglo-French katil, chatel personal property, from Medieval Latin capitale wealth from capitalis of the head— trail— Middle English trailen,

The hounds of spring are on winter’s traces and I hate a slobbering dog. All this mucus and affection is making me sick, not to mention the ejaculations of the junipers, oaks, alders and maples–I can’t stop sneezing and I’m all congested. The erectile tail feathers of the wild turkeys–the way the males display them

We held each other as our bodies turned to smoke and rose above the burning leaves. Hawks plunged through us, carrying bits of us in their beaks. We settled on roofs, clung to nests and nets. We drifted and drifted like cirrus clouds, like long tongues licking the sky, like glittery trails. Below, mounds of

(1881-1941) Grass swords browned at the hilts drowned in fog. I come across their sharp points as if a homing device had pointed me here for the first time and walk across that grass where it can offend me. Cut by cut. I wanted to see it for myself—huts, forests, the sound of rifle fire

I’ll take your word for it—whatever you say, whatever you teach, whatever you explain, whatever you describe—I’ll take your word for it. Whether science, literature, medicine, sports, agriculture, history, theater or film, art or craft, politics, philosophy, any field you may name— make your pronouncement, sound bite, or claim, adjust my perspective, expand my thought,

Basin of summer on wrought oak dining table. A brick clay bowl filled with pits. The men around my table speak in baritones. Pleasure groans. (More important than words.) I’m smitten by the taste of cherries lowered into mouths. Spit. Sweet skins broken. Poison in sealed stones. It’s just after midnight. Rosiest fruit consumed, crimsoned

Unable to stand the year he was nine, stiff legs bent and hollow, my father had nothing to do but watch wisteria grow. Tendrils inched through cracks in a bedroom pane. Brass wheels slipping on a knotty floor. Beside the alarm – his aspirin therapy swallowed. At ninety-two he’s gray plaster. Turned to side, he

–For Maanakwadiban The forest huddles over our town like a mama bear protecting her cub. There’s no traffic light, just an endless debate about whether or not we need one. Everyone knows everyone else, with nicknames like Weeders, Pug, Cricket, and Beebeeosh, their given names long forgotten.  We know whose relatives are whose, who’s gone

She comes bearing fruit, ancient by way of Asia, Africa, Alabama, digging for time, six thousand years to the other side of the world. She comes bearing fruit, rock- serious ovaries birthed without, breaking, blooming white as winter leaving overnight. She comes bearing fruit, ripe, finger-circled gifts boxed, settled into levels, for reduced swelling, burning

Those minerals erupting from maxillae and mandibles show our roots to the hard earth that will not yield to soft circumstance if it can manage—like these choppers and mashers above and under food for more than just thought that often bites back with acid or crunch etching the enamel or cracking the crown so requiring

my dears, i love you because a hot comb never dared to look you in eye. because your lives are always in autumn—a crisp, stern season of self-awareness. because you stroll through the background radiation of racial anxiety without a hazmat suit. because you have desired to be darker and lighter, invisible, yet star-shine. because

I find you sitting in an open trunk in a forgotten corner of the garage. Hands at your sides, the iron-pressed gray-scale dress with black blossoms lifts slightly at the bottom, a pewter sun hat bends over an ink cloud of tight curls, a milky softness I’ve never seen smoothes the curve of your chin.

Wilfred, I wish I could share this New England gin with you.         Tonic, lime, ice, and a sprig of rosemary here on the Florida coast where I wouldn’t ask about your writing. I’ve heard many great poets read you. I know your poems well enough,       but those greats always remind the class that

  It’s almost always too late in Kafka’s writings, like the parable in a letter he wrote his lover Milena about two people each holding a door handle on opposite sides of the same room, and walking out or not, sounding a lot like Schrodinger’s quantum cat in a closed box, alive and dead at

    I want to write a sonnet about Frida Kahlo’s orange trees, the ones that fed her that she reached up to pick an orange long before her accident and after, the same tree weighed with fruit that reached for her, but my own wife is in the hospital today because she has been

Some spit seeds     carry spirits of the dead the drowned     who clutched at clouds Smoke and sugar float     notes up over  the bayou Tinsel moss conceals a wreckage  of alligators Through the banjo’s tunnel we drift— The washboard scrubs the night shines the years      some forgiven  

One of my colleagues expresses her distress about a Muslim student who wears hijab in the classroom— afraid it might disturb some of the veterans in class. As she expresses, maybe, her own anxiety, I can’t help but notice the cross around her neck with the body of Jesus hanging with that horrified pained look