Poetry

what is this daisy doing to the ground it is goring what am I doing to this daisy I am saving this mean black daisy mine into dye or stippling crippling the country its great love landing in a cloud of sorts of course a malodor clot going strangle the singers who will not sing…

You’re not still casting the insides of things, are you? —Question asked of Rachel Whiteread in response to her sculpture “Embankment” To see a thing whitely with edge pour concrete, plaster, polyethylene.     Yes, a cast water bottle.     Yes, a staircase and a chair.         Yes, the space underneath the bed where I…

Thunder rode glories out towns thin things   Had we perceptual capacities enough & & lime   Had lived here sixteen ten times atomica ten times pieces ten times the situation ten glories ten slender life-giving stories   Story time tuned to a circular crucifix score   Fixed score scores more

Lie down long beside your confirmation number And be my garden The orders of magnitude will mount             And thunder past us This is the part When you put everything away                 Where no one can tell The difference between the wind And a human being             The haze has migrated to the other eye…

Eleven years ago I wrote a poem about looking for feminine protection in El Corte Inglés in Madrid. It seems I was always starting my period in cities I didn’t know well. The first time I went to Miami, for the book fair, I felt a cramp, then a squirt, right as I was about…

Men bleed without insight in prison? A hand on neck starts a fight in prison. He held the night’s air in his fist and screamed, then sent word by scribbled kite in prison. Steve’s eyes broke open to the bluest black, then he sported homemade tights in prison. Marquette splintered, deranged pigeon insane. He learned…

I imagine he sank like copper, a bright flutter, but I wasn’t there when they pulled him out. I only know the splintered dock where they laid his featherweight, and the way Keith’s hands shook hours later, still cool from cradling him beneath the dark bulk of the Palisades. Now, autumn falls around us in…

Grant to my brother that he come here unharmed. Grant safe passage, that he arrive whole and with his eyes open. Grant him refreshment of breath, yellow sand beneath his feet, and in his hands a few coins, a few white crystals of salt. Please grant to my brother,         lost now among winds,        …

In 1972, the Bangladeshi state adopted a policy to accord a new visibility to the 200,000 women raped during the War of Independence by eulogizing them as birangonas (war heroines), though they were frequently ostracized by their families and social circles. —Nayanika Mookherjee Do you remember what you were doing when they came for you?…