Poetry

October’s late vermilion, or the sound a cast stone makes in still water, a starkness to mark the loamy edge of becoming—wants a flash of white flank and mane receding behind the glimmering scrim, shadows moving in—a chill wind spinning in the creaking trees gathering themselves close—needs a stream, a shoot, a faraway spring, musk…

—Bullwinkle When you die you cannot know you’re dead and no one tries to tell you either. A small tree of memories rustles in your head, while a Motown song just wheezes. The last thing you remember is a doctor shrugging off the cure. You feel for the light switch but only find that token…

For a few months, I lived in a place that was cold. When I stood at the front door, in the foreground I saw a lawn covered with snow, in the middle ground a house being built, and in the background mountains that were white and craggy, like clean teeth. The house being built was…

I I learn how to breathe underwater— spring vacation, 1978. Aunt Nayyer takes me to the Caspian  where the stray herrings die by the sable shore.  She raises her arms in prayer for all the bounty  we haul home and feast for dinner.  Each fish the size of my hand. All brine and grit. Carcasses…

slapped me today open hand swiftly across my face like he did would gunshot flame set the block the night sky alight i don’t know why i’m not the only one who matters the only one sitting on the bed head in hands shoulders trembling as water does before it falls from a leaf a…

When the air is this soft, when insects and  birds are the soundtrack, when your skin is  dried salt from the sea, and your clothes are  strung out on a line in a yard whose  path to the road is familiar and  empty and open to an ocean you hear but can’t see, whose wash…

If I knew how to enter this moment I would tell you about my father, who entered a mission in California, went straight to the guestbook, and asked my mother for a pen. He wrote the words shame on and the rest can be filled in with many words. He said Native Americans were used by the…

And if the family is in a car driving And if the car is a 1965 Ford Falcon With a Hi-Po 289, velocity stacks Sticking out of the hood, solid Front axle for drag racing, and if The car is running on retreads And if the car is on an incline On the way back…

Raised by grief, raised by hunger,           the bowls of cornflakes she ate alone at night. Raised by the 4:00 a.m. ring calling her to open up, roughnecks           waiting at the café door. Raised away from language, English she was not allowed to speak.           Raised into anger—men she was not allowed to see and the one…