POETRY

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

Live the rest of your life
from one worst case to another.

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.

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.

My Multiverses

It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows?
Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.

Several someones

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

Vase

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

A Beautiful Thing

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

Good Driver

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

Clueless & Briefly Gorgeous

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.

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.

Time Travel

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

On the Night Row-Houses Across the Street Catch Fire

You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

The Man

the man is stayed bent over the canvas
of my sofa. the man is me the man is him
self and I bring down the whip…

Babylon

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

I Garden at the Edge of Autumn

There is so little left of the tomato plants.

things they won’t tell you but should:

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

necromancer woman, witch woman

In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote

“Artifact,” as Translated from Gluberhöff’s Lexicon

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

Unerased | Steep Steps

My grandmother asked, “Does it feel like being widowed?”