Poetry

Zach loves to sing Hi-ho, the derry-o, Obama in the dell.So charmed am I, I don’t correct him, conjuring upthe president standing in a lush nursery rhyme valley,meeting Michelle. Obama takes a wife. Then they are offto kids and cows, dogs and mice, a totally different life. A few years later, Zach’s little brother Alex begs to beDonald…

At the Bronx Zoo Everyone mentions them in the same breath,lions and tigers. How strange, then, to seethey are more different than anyone guessed:based on the two we were lucky to see,lions bask lazily in the same spothour after hour, not afraid to be spotted,scrutinized, photographed, chattered about,in contrast to tigers, who stride through the…

Here is my shapeless dignity—the dark loves anything with a shadow.Sweeping. A pile of fallen leaves.I love the night’s genderless hands. The dark loves anything with a shadow.I’ve never known where the water is sourced.I love the night’s genderless hands. It canbe a shock to drink from an underground spring. I’ve never known where the…

Sometimes I’m a little birdflying under the sassafrastree—strange planthas three kinds of Leaves—Simple, Mitten, and three-fingeredGlove—last year they chopped you down Sassafras I thought you Dead / stump ground downto nothing / now I lay that yellow birdunderneath—found she needed sassafrasto cure her aching head, fingeredand tearful lying on a floor of leavesas if she…

We put allour eggs in onebasket case—a guywho is one egg short ofan omelet. Everyone aroundhim walks on eggshells and no onedares say he has egg on his face. You’vegot to break a few eggheads to make an omelet,he blurts. His cabinet eggs him on, remindinghim of talking points—life starts as soon as spermhits an egg….

The albino boxer blitzed through the backwoods—more chaos machine than dog—barreling toward me once more through brittle blackberry briars and frozen birdbaths,and, again, I blasted my air horn with its hideous boom that made possums faint and pole barns shudder,but not once had that dog ever hesitated, the threat of her still plaguing my mind…

What happened?Eight-year-old (or nine-year-old) HenriettaKing whose job it was to empty chamberpots. Always the job of the lowest caste—Dalits, burakumins, or here as (was Henrietta)—slaves.Eight-year-old (or nine-year-old) Henriettadoes it here or rather there.Yes, here it is done by little HenriettaKing, a slave. Hungry half-starved worked hard.The Missus put out a piece of candy to seeif…

Surprised by ageand then my father diesActually dies, actuallyChanges form & goes, physicallyInto a small rosewood boxImploded like a star, negativeOn a little table under an awningI have to trust is put into the earth

You let that drop, and I know where you’re from.I know the verbal tic of my hometown—the one I ran so hard from with my kid,some books, and mended pocketsful of hope. I seen it shrug off cornfields like a coat,lie bare and cold and calloused with concrete.I seen it lose steel jobs, oil jobs,…