Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

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.

I have observed, the theorist
I am

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

Now that the Israeli has left, it falls
on me to make the salad.

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

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

I am still waiting for the lion

Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.

Part of being a good sad person
is always painting the shadows
in the right direction and knowing
what sorrow to art with.

I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.

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

I myself should never have been born

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

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