POETRY

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

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

love poem with dead leaves & color

I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.

Clotheslines

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

Welcome To The House of Static

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

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

robertson quay

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

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…

Drowning in sky

I have observed, the theorist
I am

painting of apple and grapes
Feast Of

anger, like you can sink teeth into, candy apple

The Kotel in Jerusalem is Filled with Cracks

We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…

Electric Eels, Finishing School, Teeth

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

Aging Punks

Every so often, they add a tattoo
in honor of some long-forgotten love.

First

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

beach
On Undressing a Color / On Undressing a Girl

I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.

Condolences

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

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.

Fallout Shelter

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

Willpower

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

Despairathon

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.