Poetry

  • Shatter-Proofed

    On the special ed school tour, he asks what is that tiny room with the tiny window, and the assistant admissions director tells us it is the seclusion room. We look at the closet-size featureless space with the metal- reinforced door and large thick steel bar on the outside, and our faces are not as…

  • Tannin, Sky, Night

    How to describe the color of a pond gone fugue in autumn wind surface tinctured blue, sky-stained and deeper water tea-stained from steeping in peat that netted entanglement that took a thousand years to form. How far the land can go in telling a story, water dark as obsidian night toward which I progress every…

  • Mira Goes Out Walking

    Translated from the Braj Bhasha by Chloe Martinez                     Listen, his gorgeous face is all I can see. I’m living and breathing him; he stays rent-free in my mind—           what I’m saying is, I keep seeing my beloved. Wherever his feet have touched the ground, I start dancing.                               I’m telling you: his face. Mine. Transfixed. Mira’s…

  • Mansions Ars Poetica 1863

    In an old story, the Almighty shaped clay with His hands to fashion the first man. In this story, enslaved hands shaped clay to make bricks to build storied big houses that will stand in this land. Both stories lead on to sagas of births—natal tales filled with first wails and nations of folk and…