Poetry

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…

I would have hefted heaven and earth aloft           to keep your hearts thumping in your thorny chests, your world-weary lungs filling like accordions,           your eyes shining with visions pierced by glee. But you performed your leave-taking dutifully—           such are nature’s commandments, its ordained cycles— so, though your vanishing slowed my life with sorrow,           I no…

How would I know, don’t you see I haven’t washed my hands? How could I even talk about anything? I don’t remember anything from Syria or my childhood or anything. Why would you ask such a stupid question? Your father should have been a monk. They come to this country with money. Money, money money….

What bird was that that just flew through my mind?

Open carry, open for business, open and shut case. Open like a store. Open like a vault. Any opening in my defenses is your fault so I close it all up as tight as I can. Then I fold closed both my hands again. This gesture makes a fist. It makes me listless and makes…

Transcendence The first thing is silence: the muffling power of snow, that Fairbanks snow hanging on every limb and twig. No noise from nearby roads, no sounds of planes taking off at the airport. Just my skis gliding along, my poles crunching the snow. My breath, and if I stopped to listen, the sound of…

Translated from the Spanish by Pablo Medina That pasta in cream sauce we made when we finished, that pasta we ate still trembling (we left the water on the stove, on a very low flame, and fifteen minutes before the end you flew, barefoot, and threw it in and barefoot flew back,                                                   remember?) That pasta…

Postmarked from the Middle of Nowhere When someone says It’s the middle of nowhere, they don’t mean New York or Boston or LA, they mean where you and I are from—Tennessee and West Virginia, Kentucky and Mississippi and Alabama. Those rural places where our lives are unfolding. Where my grandmother Maria Garcia Peña is laughing…