Poetry

we held a slave auction in class today— probably not a state-sanctioned component of AP U.S. History. but Mr. S made a block out of the front-row desks, cordoned it off with backward-facing chairs. he shame-forced Tony Miller above us and introduced him as “item #5.” he’d prepared a catalog: a one-sided sepia sheet with…

In some dreams it is possible to visit Uruk and to be its king as I did sensing all along I was a bad king predisposed to impatience and affronted by impertinence and I know now what I really needed was a good friend of the woods to teach me things   Yes that’s what…

It is always there, the blurry dot, the mark, so easy to dismiss, between you and the life you’re focused on, though more distinct with white behind it: a blowing curtain, a wedding gown, while pinning bed sheets on a line, a blank wall in a waiting room, and, late in life, while leaning on…

I tie my hat—I crease my shawl (522) —Emily Dickinson   is carried crown first through light that hums. Her country is built of two rooms: need and desire. Birds rarely come near. She cannot see her shoes or the tops of buildings or the moon. She wonders if she is kind. She is as…

From the Museum of Failed Masters     Here you will feel no ecstasy, no bright imperative to weep, or to give thanks, or to endure. Instead, we offer solace in what’s gaudy, saccharine, timid, tame: in trees rigidly perfect, Christs with too-white teeth, a sunset blushing at its own excess. The portraits here preserve…

You have to feel your feelings     Right now I feel amused, uncomfortable, tolerant, with a twist in my heart, as if I’m applying for a visa to the country of unhappiness and sorrow which gets mixed reviews on Trip Advisor. In this waiting room, we are all seedy & hopeless and the elephant…

The Milky Way’s glinting ribbon helps the dung beetle roll his good ball of shit back to the ones he loves. But blind him to the sky with as little as a hat, and he will swerve like a drunk who, if he makes it home alive,   might find the family, soured with waiting,…

I miss the charcoal drawing of gallium that hung in my chemistry class. How the metal whose melting point is below human body temperature was misspelled galium, how the hand cupping the silver goop stopped at the wrist. I don’t think it was meant to disturb, to invoke a caught thief. I don’t think the charcoal spreading…

Here’s where I leave you. A dream, a quiver. A fickle bit of light after the rain. Squint: I can’t really remember now where I was going. We lick the haze, open our lips, find again pleasure in what we nibble aimlessly.   Seconds become minutes always, but sometimes hours forget the days. There are…