He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

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

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

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

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

The sin is existing.

I buy too much, for someone of my stature.
could pawn a skinny metaphor to purchase a plump skin.
its reputed in our lineage— to daydream a life that shreds our pockets.

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

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

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.

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

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

I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster

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

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

I myself should never have been born

I have observed, the theorist
I am

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

I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.