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

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

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

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.

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

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

There is so little left of the tomato plants.

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

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

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

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

I myself should never have been born

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

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

Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

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

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

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.