Poetry

Us, we are morphemes. There’s no Maltese without Arabic—like one kidney couched beneath the other. The white-ribboned girl in the rubble is singing,her tongue’s washed-out fears in Arabic array.“Tmewwitna,” she says, “tiġi l-mewt u tmewwitna.” She’ll hammer the question, she’s stalking for answers,each consonant caught in the stalk of her throat.The white-ribboned girl in the…

I once heard someone say everythingyou think is not truth. Even now,in the winter no one expected,my friends are being rebornat an astonishing rate: the log crustedover with lichens, the unnaturalleatherleaf mahonia, the hermitthrush with her eggplant-seed belly.After a few seasons, the log will have turnedto powder, having given itselfto several colonies of mushrooms.And what…

“Even if you are not ready for the day / it cannot always be night.”—Gwendolyn Brooks Even if you’re not ready for anything Black, it cannot always be white.Even if you’re not ready for the women, it cannot always be the men.Even if you’re not ready for the spectrum, it cannot always be a binary.Even…

I came from the center of a coal-rock.I hatched when a bird built a nestfrom its straw hair and sat on mewith its whole heavy heart. * One evening, the lightbulb hangingfrom the kitchen ceiling began to flicker.The bulb threw its swinging light at the kettle,which began to look like a speckled egg. The kettle woke to the lightbulb’s despairing voice at…

Captive air, captive words, only eyes scan the world.Broken doll with no tongue, little grace still remains.Angry words, all she hears. Selfish tears, she is told. Captive air, heavy lungs, innocent mind holding shame.Little girl, turn the tears into clear, lucid words.Let them shine into light; let them glow in the dark.

You’ve warned me about this, my machine—the threat of linear stains on paper, floodingover letters when you’re copying my pages.Your glassed-in mind is usually mimetic.But when something goes wrong, you’ll startto leak a gray scrim, as when a monk spilled wineon his inked annotation in the thirteenth century,freeing what I have to see as ghosts…

Look, I never swore to be as modestas a Victorian ankle, and sure, God blushedat a few of my prayers. I flush the hallelujahsfrom my skin before bed and let heaven gnawat my window’s light. My diary is a privateweather of regrets, but I refuse the shameof the moon. You can’t make me robe myselfin…

stolen apricot hair lotion,peeling accusatory aspirational posters,opening the sex drawer “accidentally,”spoonful of black ice rocky road,universal dismissive degree certificate,pocked ceiling of cottage nothing,breathless sound of the keyin almost a door, trees in still poses,filthy shoes in pairs for the doomed ark,time passing overhead,single cloudiness, O hourglass days,wasted sand, was it rightto scribble leave him under the one…

Quodlibet For a laugh, let’s list the things I lack:a foreskin, first & foremost—that was lootedlong before I noticed it; a knackfor foreign languages—my own included;memory—for all that I’ve alludedto; belief that gods or ghosts exist;the drive to love—& all that death’s polluted.Looking back, this is, in fact, a listof what I’ve had & lost…