so now that they are mangled and losing their juice to the bottom of the thin green bag i struggled so mightily to remove from the dispenser we are still going to cup their mangled flesh in our hands we are still going to eat them
All in Poetry
so now that they are mangled and losing their juice to the bottom of the thin green bag i struggled so mightily to remove from the dispenser we are still going to cup their mangled flesh in our hands we are still going to eat them
foolish child,
america sips her wine
some destroyers capsize
out of vanity.
And then, no drink.
Or too many. Giddyap! Now, the crown molding of the place
looks doable, needs a bit of work to be relatable. The desert
will always be inchoate. We may never go. I forget
Without looking up from the plate
a napkin hits the tile floor.
I’ve stepped out of the tight lane
they’ve drawn for me
I didn’t say anything & maybe he didn’t want me to,
instead I thought about how the stones bounced
on a watery reflection of the moon,
the ripples leaving a broken costera of stars.
I wondered at the distance between I, who
stood barefoot on warm gravel, and those up
and without gravity’s pull to safe ground.
And then you fall a bit, and you are covered. It makes you think in hugs, though; like, that first night again, when it was omnipotent and sighing, heavy, this annoyed creature. I just wanted it to love me so badly, because I had come all that way just to see it, you know?
The dim sum place by Dumpling Café has it
both ways. Empire Garden says one side of its marquee;
Emperor Garden the other.
We be an endless maniacal scream. the witches
that cannot burn & will not stand for our reckoning.
We be the reckoning. judge & jury & quiet
execution. rapture running this machine into the ground.
She should just have a balls-out good time
sometime, I hear myself saying to my
grad students, probably about somebody sad,
their idea of Sylvia Plath.
me, a rattled creature:
a stray altar
an uninhabited property
Pray that drowning is the mercy you are bestowed. Pray that your flesh is transposed into something worthy of redemption—a sea flower, the lush plump legs of a dungeness crab on a seafood buffet,
i haven’t been touched since
the cold came & the last time i was kissed
with any honesty, the crops on every lawn
& meadow were still tossing their pleasures
into the air
I am in the kitchen cutting my sister’s sandwiches
the way she likes them. I am on the staircase
making music with the steps that creak. I am in
the walls and in the air ducts and in the sewers.
If you want to know what I think, I think Santa Claus is a Black woman.
She takes on extra shifts before the holiday, puts her tips
away in a jar in her sock drawer, and ends up buying everything
on her kids’ list with a credit card.
some of us, had the good sense to call out to the warmth & beg
it to return to us in our sleep—when it was ready to sing the joy
back into our bones—humming the rhythms of our grandmothers’
deepest laughs.
Her azure skin waning under a lunar gloom.
Just the bare hull of her, spread out like a water deer,
weighing her head down against a familiar cloud,
surrendering to shadow.
Sorry I didn’t respond.
I was going to, but your laugh sounded
too much like an insult.
I am not your parachute
I’m a trampoline left oscillating from your stay,
of the class of 1914
dismantled, stiff and agape
in cold French mud
punched by painful numbness.
I am bad for you? So is smog and second hand
smoke and a good rare steak and what am I
to them if I am anything at all.