Poetry

My name is all this air and shaped soundin my mouth like an invisible mealand, most days, I tell no one howto get back home. Which way in the nightto go that will avoid the silent riverand bad neighborhoods and the trackswhich bend and groanbeneath the tiresome weight of trains.I show nobody my hands,and touch…

“From the Unsent Midnight Letters: Remission” —for L dearly beloved— you need rest but can’t seem to escapeanother quiet or not-so-quiet litany of reasons to spit the bulletof sleep          what if I perish? your worry bells over & over—: although it rings outwork? family? desire?          with time on my breath I offer the one lullaby I believebelongs…

I don’t know why I joined the white sorority.We whispered Latin passwords to each other.They wore white robes and sang to us. I don’t know where I belong.And the parties, like “Pimps and Hoes”inside a rented Laundromat with fake hickies and scars on our skin and pimp juicein pimp cups. Look at me: the only…

After he died, the mirrorsreflected everything.           The half-face of his friend          walking toward the door, his wife’s back, his sister’shands. I was there too,           suspended somewhere          in glass, briefly, indirectly— What part of me witnessedmyself newly without           my father? I tried not to look.          Cover the mirrors— Forget yourself to remember the dead.Someone show me how           to divide…

I keep a few loose threads from each membraneand loop them through a needle to sew an Xon the sleeve of your favorite black sweater. Later, we make love and you complainmy fingers burn your body. I rub my eyeswith one hand and reach for your inner ear to burn us both from the inside….

1. A marriage is a contract to be strandedon an island with one other person who retains the option to sometimesnot even talk to you. And when sometimes is all the times, it feels like you are the last twoIndians, or Browns, left on the planet, and it’s Splitsville in Cleveland. Thirty-fivewhen we left each…

Logic—my    father’s    logic    diedJune 24, 2009, in bright daylight.Murdered   in   the   afternoon.   Ihung  up  Missing  Person  postersof   myself   and   listened   for   thesound    of    a    tree    falling.   Thesound  of  the  wind  through  treesis  called  psithurism.  There’s  noword  for  the  translator  of  wind.If the wind is words, the trees areexclamation points. The spears ofmoonlight,  question   marks.   Myfather  doesn’t   realize   his  wordsalways end in prepositions. I havea  problem  with [the moon], thereis  a  problem  between [the  moonand  me],  the  problem  is  on [themoon]. What  if  he  can  no  longerfind   what  is  being  modified,  inthe way snow…

For the band of panicked street cats               lapping spoiled soup I’d discarded                                             at the base of what I only knew               to call a Mexican rose, and for you, of course,                              dawdling on the lawn, bent over                                             a Walmart telescope, in search ofstars that are remotest—Andromeda’s                                                            cities, the vaporous                                             shimmering that was the first star               of Ophiuchus, which even by then was gone,…

Civility—died  on  June  24, 2009, atthe age of 68. Murdered by a strokewhose    paintings    were     recentlyfeatured  in  a  museum,  two  whitesquare  canvases,  black  scissors  inthe  middle  of  each,  open,  pointingat   each   other.   After   my   father’sstroke,     my    mother    no     longerspoke  in  full   sentences. Fragmentsof  codfish,  the  language  of  savages,each   syllable   a   mechanical   dartfrom   her   mouth.   Maybe   this   iswhat     happens     when     languagefails,  a  last  breath  inward  but  nobreath  outward.  A  state  of  holdingone’s  breath  forever  but  not  dying.When     her     lungs     began     theirfailing,  she …