Empty vessels make the most sound, I think, as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.
you quit wearing pants loaf around your yard in hole-nipped panties
Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.
and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud
I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.
Even as the sun warms the concrete the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.
it’s touch-and-go with me and weddings
I tap at the alphabet while a single deer taps at the dirt beyond the brush on the far side of the tree line.
Even from this distance I could go out the door it would bang shut and crumble
how does an afternoon turn on its axis?
You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.
Lights on the dashboard spell out “You still can’t kiss me”
If America is Babylon / and you are an exile / newly arrived among pagans / Catholic, ‘Ngolan, Black, woman / you already know how to pray
four-thirty a.m.
anger, like you can sink teeth into, candy apple
Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night; should have boiled old coffee before noon.
Part of being a good sad person is always painting the shadows in the right direction and knowing what sorrow to art with.
The collective failure of ethical standards
here is the sky in stop motion, flickering, a still shot in monochrome
Yes I am guilty, I’m guilty. A sin was desirable then. Bring the dancer back to the stalks.