POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
heavy rain
The Plot

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

robertson quay

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

Condolences

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

Despairathon

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

Snow Falls from Branches

Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

Landscape with Ash

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.

Clotheslines

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

Willpower

Live the rest of your life
from one worst case to another.

My Multiverses

It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows?
Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.

Dis Place Ment

People have always coped with flooding, and they learned to cope with death.

A Beautiful Thing

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

melting ice cap
blue is the color of surrender

you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?

Tea

my father holds
his favorite drink

Ode To the Dove Pt. VI (Avrom Sutzkever)

Yes I am guilty, I’m guilty. A sin was desirable then.
Bring the dancer back to the stalks.

Observer of the Patient

Her brown eyes,
how a fig
considers itself.

The State School 1984 His Given Name Was Wilbur  We Called Him Magpie

Mostly he ate what was put on his plate
snuck coffee grounds or dirt for a snack
Once a zipper Unzipped

Lavandula

Listen to me: I know
the winter gloom in
mid-summer…

Babylon

If America is Babylon / and you are an exile / newly arrived among pagans / Catholic, ‘Ngolan, Black, woman / you already know how to pray