a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

Every so often, they add a tattoo
in honor of some long-forgotten love.

Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.

We stop doing dishes while
a mile unwinds
from the tree outside.

my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house

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

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

I count my homes—
those of my scattered youth
the sanctuary of our young family
the intermittent rest stops
of apartments and vacations.

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

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

my father holds
his favorite drink

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

It recommended
soft porn, as gentle prodding and petting parent
to parent might calm and soothe the kid.

here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome

I am still waiting for the lion

We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…

the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.

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