Poetry

I have been living           despite myselfmy territory hemmed by mud and threatof mud          If there is a land without its ownsubliminal violences          this night offers nodefense of what has died in it          Some thingsare only nourished in a stutter of kudzuand the inconsistencies of silver the moonshucks off           Casual machines honey the darkwith the monotony of their health…

I’m enthralled by a cartoon’s coercion. Behind me, seen in the television’s reflection—exaggerated colors, animations—children whisperingbeside the slumbered old menthat gravel-in-teeth language: fuck, shit. I still yearn for youth, to imagine algorithms of birds,waddling outside on the lawn, the boys chasingfeathers, and the girls braiding a mother’s dahliain a beast’s night-black wings. Ah!—there’s the dawn-touch…

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 begs for fruit. And what do…

By which I mean I look like that flower that fireworks in mid-sentencein the sky, over the end of a sweaty ball game. The crowd makes its wayto their cars while popcorn-spill & multicolored chocolate candies meltinto concrete steps. Maybe I mean you make me want to livebeachfront—so I can taste the salt & cliff-twist…

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 flowers? Fuck the flowers, those…

Humpbacks in journey rendered,          in Eastern Australian watersan Indian Ocean air. How pleading           tones jump across continents intorivers 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 music? Hisvoice haunts night-oceans in silver;          intones his own dialect…

In my Fresno, there are no prerequisites,just a frontage road inside the fence floppedto the west. The cover charge for a poetic identityis delegitimized alongside white aesthetics—between the rows welting the earth’s still dustlike corduroy.                                                   On one side, almond trees, pistachios.Fieldworker housing spray-painted with ads.The fervent recall of history from poets in the traditionhover in…

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 somegoddamn gentleman. Romance is for show-offs.Roses, a waste of nature in…

1. A splinter driftsthrough a soot-slathered sun ray,its light: blue in orange orthat orange glowing. Beside the fence’s sunlit face,wrapped in a calico quilt,my head tilts and I seepressed into tire treada snow-nibbled leaf. Nine years afloat,the sky, dressed as water,neighs at headlightsthrummed awakewhen Coyote’s teethjewels the mesa’s rim. 2. I turn to my left…