Poetry

—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

Today in the taxi I drove two jazz musicians to LaGuardia, the singer and her husband, the pianist. I recognized them right away. We talked about Duke Ellington. We drove by Marcus Garvey Park and it twinkled like his plume hat and gold epaulets. The pianist lifted his hand like an axle and the singer

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

About my past life, my American friends shake their heads, blinking. Pints of shadows fall, a mother’s womb swept bare. Some things are good unseen. They see nothing that looks like that girl I was, cherry- dappled cheeks, fingers curled around my mother’s hand, unclenching, picking on an elephant bell ringing in the window, the

(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

Driving into the country along the straight track of a manmade road. Ahead, a canyon billows dust-smoke, words tremble in the lobe, an old melody whirs deep in the cortex. Light rises—or an illusion of it. Ahead, a field of cacti wavers— lingers. Rusting water silos with perched crows. Serpents snaking somewhere below. & the

–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

We took root in sidewalks when there were any, followed mile-long tracks in the street, hopscotch games in every direction could break your Mama’s back & every line your father’s missing spine, cracked gravel a slit in a sick arm, soft enough for a weed to poke through, a dandelion or two bright as yellow

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 wake up to a bird calling cheat, cheat, cheat. What bird are you and whom do you call? You caught me sleeping with the windows open. What sounds like footsteps in the woods— squirrels scurrying through dead leaves. Things are not what they seem. When will new leaves arrive? There is no one

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

In one borough of a city nearly out of surgical masks, a jazz station repeats like the dream of a better country. Doctors and nurses labor around the clock, dictating a Last Will & Testament between critically-ill patients— given who we are as Americans, the respirator-rhythm alleges we triumph or perish one grim breath at

the cats don’t care if the rent goes up next year right now the back door’s open we tumble out the sunlight’s merciless mere buds on the branches no feathers in the shade the blue jay blares succulents peep green from puddingstone I lay a blanket down cold filters from the ground my head, hurting

Without a boogie board, you’d fling your body into the curve of the Pacific. Without baby oil, you’d still burn & be tender for days. Without a blanket, you’d drop your faded Eddie shirt, sit—or later, shake it out & mop off the salt. Without shades, you’d razor your hand like a visor—squint at five

Or Schwammerl. What you’d have called Schubert, standing over his 1.5 meters, if you were lucky enough to be his friend. If you were Augie Bank’s friend & Jewish, had broken your nose when tackling him in a Sherman Park sandlot game, he’d call you FNK in public, but slip you a sketch of your mug, captioned Flat-Nose-Kike, when

I don’t comb my hair  or paint my waif face  or clothe my scant body  in matching colors.    Who sees them now?    I do care for this body  I wash it, and oil it for comfort,  eat seeds and nuts  and greens.    For it contains my words  That I still send, more

Missed Connection Ad: Cher is a babe; that hair bounces more than a rubber ball, and hey! who knew Nicholas Cage could look good without a hand? I have two, ten healthy fingers — can only find one woody on me! and I’m no Ronny. You look at me in the office like I’m Johnny, but

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

in purgatory there are only beds         with blue sheets no, the walls are white                        the bathroom floors, red tile, water    slick. in purgatory. you are watching.          close your eyes. there is nothing you can do.                there is always something you can do. no the walls are white,                        the bathroom floors red. tile water

Our train moved faster until our country was a blue fold in the horizon. Passengers remained still as our carriage fell off the dining table. You smiled with lips that had dried as you queued in the snow for monthly rations. That day, you brought back the carcass of a bird, laid it on the

Like I’m waiting for kismet. Maktoub. Waiting for a number, a letter––cryptic for stage, grade. How many nodes did she twist away? How many, how many… Tell me to focus on healing. Friends bring guavas, mini pumpkins, t-shirts, pens, soup. The house is a garden: five white orchids, purple tulips, yellow roses, irises. Red bromeliad

The rain is a hood       pulled over the world. Our neighbor’s house, vanishes.         & its windows through which we watch things             undress. The plastic deer neck-bent        as if chewing up the lawn go the way of other deer,        of the wolves,        the arroyo turned creek again.                     & beyond

  circa January 20, 2009 Some were perched on the limbs Of D.C. trees to get a glimpse of it, History being made, once again, In the middle of so much black & white, To hear Aretha spin her rhythm with Our blues into a hymn where hymns Had never been made, up close. All

  Rainbows exist, the nurse explains, not in the troposphere, but only on the viewer’s retina. Then, staring at her iPhone as if it housed time, or regret, she excuses herself. Alone till my pupils dilate and the doctor arrives, I have leisure to ponder how doubt can enter the eye socket of the body

Lines in italics were pronounced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a speech outlining U.S. demands for a new Iran nuclear accord. America is sort of tripping down the alphabet. B for balk, ban, bigotry, bully. C for Children separated from their parents, moms & Dads detained, demonized, deported. Expired visa sole crime of

Where the edges of homes run together an incision of alley just wide enough for bodies to pass without scraping the paint off the bricks. A flowerless plot of raised earth meant for greener things. If those are strays praying wildly with their teeth, it’s not to the moon. I don’t think we’d recognize that

My father is in bed half a country away telling my mom how to make chicken from the sun. His cancer opens a shadow hand in his brain and where it darkens, the world slides sideways. He looks through the window by his bed into the 1940s. He thinks it’s TV and he tells me

Toine has a new stereo. Mystikal grumbles “Shake ya ass, but watch yo self. Shake ya ass” into the street. A squirrel crushed by a car, baking on the pavement— you have a stick in hand to prod the roadkill, but Chris passes grayscale porn printouts, hot sauce stained. You can’t see much because of

I knew a boy named Shaun whose mother loved successive men that charmed and tortured her. One day in ninth grade Shaun brought a luminous hunting knife to lunch and put it near the throat of the dean, who had always seemed the wryest, most unmovable force as he supervised and distrusted us for no

You can cry quite long in a diner without much interruption, assuming the diner is only moderately populated, the décor is outdated and immaculate, and you are capable of the type of crying during which tears do not disrupt your posture. You must hold inside a muscular sorrow and a sense of endurance for torture

this morning I woke up spiny and sharp-tongued turned my eyes towards the sun some things are born this way       long slice down the midsection where I am cut, the living gel pours out glutinous after the night has gone, persistence of dreams think of a mirror       memory of a mirror slippery as mercury, a

Flooded with off-key carousel music days careen by, dizzying thoughts, meaning more blown out than a famous self-taught trumpeter’s cheeks. Patted down & packed into shrinking seats, I feel myself ballooning into less. Flew away yet took it all with me, on fire doused in northwest tranquility. Obscured by clouds in the brain, I knew

The therapist urges, Feel everything. Don’t make an ordeal about everything. Love takes off our layers. Kept promises and sustained tenderness peel everything. We had a democracy, a middle class. Will the one percent steal everything? The weak suffer from our violent hungers. In the butchered pig’s last squeal, everything. My cat grown blind and

I stitched the Halloween costume my son chose, its blue cape heralding an orange capital G, a bobble-nosed mask. He didn’t like each fitting but new blue jammies were fine. All dressed, he revealed the child he was— standing still, waiting, his look expectant, began to melt away. Had I left in a pin, was

Stealing glances at the glowering clockface, Wednesday afternoon, the workweek’s foreboding balance sheet. The liabilities are quarts of good intentions rotting on the vine. Beading assets are teaspoonfuls of quicksilver. Quarts and teaspoons are inscrutable units. Meaning-well carries Happy Hour arguments in favor of ascending out of the red. Unventured ventures worm into old wounds

Was I so small and contained, small to together with younger sister Julie, contained to swim, sunlit, shore to shore, across the ocean of a washtub filled with water? Swimsuits, summer trips to Thayer Missouri, grandparents’ farmhouse, from the picnic table, mother and father cackle. Adulthood and its ulterior motives, I tried very hard to

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.