POETRY

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

People have always coped with flooding, and they learned to cope with death.

Babylon

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

Landscape with Ash

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

close up of sun
Mercury in Retrograde

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

Clotheslines

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

Sadness is a Sin

If my life was the size of my arm, I would stretch it out for you.

REVENGE SCENE

Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.

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.

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.

The Body is a Sin

The sin is existing.

Going Broke

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

Like dirt

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

Vase

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

Snow Falls from Branches

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

Letter To a Young Poet

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

“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.

Lavandula

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

heavy rain
The Plot

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time