an ekphrastic golden mashup after Gwendolyn Brooks “We Real Cool” & Russell Lee’s April 13, 1941 photo “Negro Boys on Easter Morning” Carlos, Lee, Kendrick, Jaimey, me—oooooh, We pooled the marble money, nickel cokes Real cool. Southside breeze, brave now, we laugh, we groove, We freeze, we grit teeth, oooooh, Ms. Brooks knew,…
June 1900 Listen: water boils in a rusty pot Tonight we have rice Do you hear rain tapping the boarded-up well? Tonight I am water I am rain I am a clear brook I am washing Manuél’s hair of ants and twigs I am two hands dissolving death I…
Translated by Lars Gustaf Andersson and Carolyn Forché When I was about to leave, I was held back by the word “out.” I turned around, always prepared, in a labyrinth of my own. When I was about to enter I was held back by the word “in.”
Translated from the Brazilian Portuguese by Ellen Doré Watson I inherited this house, which has one room I avoid, paralyzed by its icy air. I keep to a smaller space where virtues and laughter, even a few seeds of joy remain intact, retain some life. But when I behold the massive entryway, I stiffen—smiling…
Double golden shovel on a line from Vera Nazarian’s Dreams of the Compass Rose In the throes of my 41st fatherless Tuesday, I am strapped deep and down in the gut of a turbulent Boeing—keyboarding, wrestling dactyls. I wonder if the desert, a hundred grandiose death-drops below me, is still that celluloid desert, the…
Dear L, It’s 3:19 a.m. I just fed the baby while my son screamed, I want to sleep in your bed! We don’t let him until the sun wakes up, that’s the rule. The sun is still in its bed, we explain. He counters, But I’ll be really quiet. I promise. His plea, I just want to hug…
I loved an addict once & the tactile universe— sometimes my hands still shake uncontrollably. I would like to be inhabited at regular intervals measured by sundials. Anyone can be a place in America: a moving target, a strip of glistening sand, a clitoral appendage, a systematic reshuffling of parts. My own…
I am a child of the sea but I’ve always lived by rivers they’re never the same when the moon is full I stop in wonder when winter comes I crawl in my cave I used to love the city its buildings and clamor now I’d rather walk in the woods and…
In Westwood, California, our professor, whose name was, he told us proudly, Yiddish for fucker, careened through Merrill. Goethehaus I pronounced ‘goathouse’ and the professor’s modus operandi was startled. Farnoosh scrawled it wasn’t me on our copies of ‘Lost in Translation.’ Who is Gunmoll Jean? We were too shy to ask. But she did. Lee…
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