POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
Condolences

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

Good Driver

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

Back Suplex

Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat

Electric Eels, Finishing School, Teeth

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

The love of my life moved from portland to new england

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

Black Ghosts of Ponderosa on a Silhouette of Hill

Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.

Babylon

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

Finding My Fix

I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.

Lavandula

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

Getting Postcards From a Piano Showroom

The two of us toast to a man we both love, to whatever degree, clink our glasses and laugh…

Lobster

I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster

Letter To a Young Poet

Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”

Several someones

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

close up of sun
Mercury in Retrograde

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

Hollywood Hills
the remarkable thing

I am still waiting for the lion

There is an alternative universe

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

I could, even now, go down to the water

Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble

Going Broke

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

woman at bar
After She Told Me You Pushed Her Down the Stairs

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

Despairathon

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.