You have a gun but to use the bulletYou decide your wife, having snuggled itUnder her tongue, should then smuggle itInto your pie hole but she swallows it.You have a gun but to use the poisonYou have your son dip a rose in venomSo strong the smell alone will kill someone,But the first to die…
Maxine Waters, being of fire, being of swordShaped like a silver tongue. Cauldron, siren,Black as tarnation, black as the consciousnessOf a black president’s wife, black as his black tieTuxedo beside his black wife in room after roomOf whiteness. My grandmother’s name had waterIn it too, Water maker. I have wept listeningTo Aretha Franklin sing Precious…
“Carry on,” they say,Even if you carry nothingBut your own desolation,And how much does desolation weigh?It’s like an armload of sirens.When I walk through the meadow,When I walk down the mountain valleys,When I walk in beautyI try to remember who I am.Nothing doing.Out there in space, Einstein washes his hair.A thirsty wind drubs the open…
THERESE Julia found it in a pile of old stuff. She didn’t want it, so she said she would give it to Therese. What was she supposed to do with that? Therese said—a beaten up old book with nothing in it but blank paper. Well, you like to do handwriting, Julia said. Therese looked at…
What is the importance of reading and writing in this moment? Those who come from overtly troubled communities and countries have long known that literature holds enormous power: the veracity that can bring about humility, death, growth, and change. As a child walking to school in the tumult of 1940s China, my mother saw men…
1. I know where I came from, born up out of the half shell dog house, roof tin fence rusted right into summer. The bended sag of the wire gate, the warm rustled fur, the worn-down dirt, the dog shit, and all of us, blind pups and children, new in our bodies, snuffling for mothers…
There are moments I smooth the crumpledfolds of my life and read them like a map.Travel all roads at once. I meet you again in a small townwe reach from opposite directions, a place where no one knows usyet we’re immediately known:two strangers. The map’s creases make as much sense, or as little,as the roads….
Think I don’t know nothing.Child.Stopped kissing me goodnightwhen she turned fourteen.Well.Every good thingturn to glass.Then break.She ratherstay away.Got my nose.Eyes, too.When she was little,they called her Lil Gail.Bet she don’t remember.She so busywriting things.Don’t tell your businessin front of Tameka.She will put it in a poem.She better notwrite nothingabout me.I rememberwhen I had her.Two and…
In Trinidad, the police have so much power, and they are so young. How to Wear the Uniform The police uniform is a cruel piece of work, the sleeved gray shirt a punishment of thick, rough wool and polyester in the Caribbean heat. Starched to the pliancy of grade-two cardboard, it invites an itchy ring…
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