POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
On the Night Row-Houses Across the Street Catch Fire

You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

Electric Eels, Finishing School, Teeth

Millions of Americans have been affected by identity theft. It’s probably the greenhouse gases.

Dis Place Ment

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

oh Manifesto

The collective
failure
of ethical standards

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?

The Body is a Sin

The sin is existing.

The River

I myself should never have been born

Clotheslines

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

Good Driver

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

Fallout Shelter

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

I Garden at the Edge of Autumn

There is so little left of the tomato plants.

Hollywood Hills
the remarkable thing

I am still waiting for the lion

appetites

you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties

close up of sun
Mercury in Retrograde

You said it was okay to blame
what goes wrong on the planet

Several someones

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

heavy rain
The Plot

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

Lobster

I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster