Civility—died on June 24, 2009, at the age of 68. Murdered by a stroke whose paintings were recently featured in a museum, two white square canvases, black scissors in the middle of each, open, pointing at each other. After my father’s stroke, my mother no longer spoke in full sentences. Fragments of codfish, the language…
I have been living despite myself my territory hemmed by mud and threat of mud If there is a land without its own subliminal violences this night offers no defense of what has died in it Some things are only nourished in a stutter of kudzu and the inconsistencies of silver the moon shucks off Casual machines honey…
I’m enthralled by a cartoon’s coercion. Behind me, seen in the television’s reflection— exaggerated colors, animations—children whispering beside the slumbered old men that gravel-in-teeth language: fuck, shit. I still yearn for youth, to imagine algorithms of birds, waddling outside on the lawn, the boys chasing feathers, and the girls braiding a mother’s…
Bit by bit I’ll go on surviving. Love like the sheets tumbled soft. Miles of snow outside Lisbon. Before turning the camera to the window, Soon, I’ll let you go. They say that love continues. That the ghosts or angels will usher us home. February again, & the table…
By which I mean I look like that flower that fireworks in mid-sentence in the sky, over the end of a sweaty ball game. The crowd makes its way to their cars while popcorn-spill & multicolored chocolate candies melt into concrete steps. Maybe I mean you make me want to live beachfront—so I can taste…
Georgia, forgive me. For years I’ve carried this grief like a hoop of bone, framing everything I see: fragments of water, fragments of earth. No visible wound, no body to bury, no song for safe passage to whatever the next world brings. I must be the only person here not asking, Where are the…
Humpbacks in journey rendered, in Eastern Australian waters an Indian Ocean air. How pleading tones jump across continents into rivers of sound scientists call non- human revolution, perplexes. Perhaps a singer lost course and migrated east from Antarctic feeding grounds. Did whitecaps trick or force; before he forged a life worth its…
In my Fresno, there are no prerequisites, just a frontage road inside the fence flopped to the west. The cover charge for a poetic identity is delegitimized alongside white aesthetics— between the rows welting the earth’s still dust like corduroy. On one side, almond trees, pistachios. Fieldworker housing spray-painted with ads. The fervent recall…
Blame all the wrong books I read at thirteen. Blame my cold blooded birth in late December. Blame the truth for how dark it gets, blame the bite down, the pinned wrists— dearest, here it is: I wasn’t raised right. But I don’t need a daddy, don’t want some goddamn gentleman. Romance is for…
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