POETRY

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

You can’t make them love you, no matter how artfully you betray yourself

Try not to see your own predicament in every fucking thing.

There is an alternative universe

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

i do not want to wait until it’s too late

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.

Babylon

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

Back Suplex

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

[Zoetrope with Particulates in it and a Newborn]

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

Mom, in Her Dementia, Steals Oranges

and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place

Finding My Fix

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

Electric Eels, Finishing School, Teeth

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

Vase

The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.

Pit Stop in Kansas

we drove on through
the blue seal of morning as the turbines
turned and winked out their hearts

All In

I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt

3:17 AM as Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks

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

Dear Deer in the Compost Pile

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

Like dirt

this is what I want you to to see:
leaves falling because it is too late for them not to

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.

Landscape with Ash

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.