Archive | Page 2 of 9 | Abandon Journal

Taking photographs of my hometown has given me a chance to reflect on people whom I have not valued.

I’m dancing with my best friend’s husband, under the influence of his jaws and thighs.

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

I’msorry I‘ll see what happens iLife

The hamantaschen have followed us from apartment to apartment, all of the kitchens dark, cramped, cluttered.

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

Through the dusty window in my parent’s bedroom, I watched the neighbor’s cattle graze.

The sin is existing.

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

my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house

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

Shadows and psychological metaphors are favored photographic subjects for me.

He used to hold my hand on Commonwealth. I wonder sometimes if he ever still thinks about my mouth.

She turns her back for me to fasten the rows of metal hooks. Why isn’t our small, tender freedom enough?

Jenna says that he typically goes for redheads, so I run to Target and buy a box of hair dye.

“The woman was a catastrophe,” Carlos told me at the time. “But she was as honest as my face is ugly.”

ONLY THROUGH PAIN,
CAN WE TRULY FEEL ALIVE

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

You’re joking, I say, interrupting the steady bumping of the doctor’s bushy white mustache.

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