It’s not safe to be a woman You come into a world of wantand to want yourself,you got to get in line behind all the other hungry mouthstheir names for youthe hooks of a bramble you go to water every daybecause everyone still needs to breathe You carry the water from eternityfrom ever sincefrom behind…
No one believes she suffers. But it seemsTo her to be her skeleton, the thingOn which the basic meat of everythingHangs, everything important anyway, from dreamsOf flying to the fear of ruin—selfTo blame, or target of another’s aim.No one remembers that she changed her name.She sets her lively brain up on a shelfInside a jar…
The day will come when someone will not be able to make the final entry.Beloved, beloved, beloved, the day’s ink will say—In every direction, thickets of least and magnitude sang.Apples sweetened. A hummingbird stood mid-air on its wings.Even the fires of hell, beloved: they could be felt.
Hold me, Earth, like a mother. Make your natureheal me, dirt, with an orange sweet potato. Slide my sorely inept red cells some ironbeans and berries, and feed my crooked fingers milk of grief, if they need it. Cry like rainstorms,sigh like gusts from the high, high distant mountains, shape your clouds as they wash…
From Sor Juana: A Canticle, a Soratorio across a gap of centuries how dare be field poet? & live in a nun’s cell? in charge of theorem under subordination that you come from far anthropomorphic, bride of Christ that you muse & make noise, study & be poet that you carry proverbial bundle, Sor Juana, of books on your back of what? of…
Called widow makers because their branches fallduring droughts. They sever their own branches to conserve water, to save the whole tree. As if cuttingoff a hand to save a whole body. How does the tree decide what to drop? This one dropped two limbs,one onto a car. It only took the men a day to remove the…
No matter where I went todayI was not Michael.I was not even the shadowof my middle name.No name took my place,no name was asked.When I sat on a benchthinking of you, tryingto see your face,I was not Michael—I knew because the rainchose to fall nearbut not upon me,and it wasn’t to makean exception.People were walking…
Friday—first day of fall Two friends, two beers each. One has just held the hand of theother’s dying mama, regaling her with tales of her son’smisadventures. He’s moving to Houston the next day, far intothe flooding swamp. Mama is quiet, peaceful, pain-free. Go, shesays, go have a good time. After the two beers the friends…
My roommate was having an argumentwith his girlfriend: It’s the wrong key. No it’s not. Well it isn’t working. Once you and I had disagreements like that,I ended it. But there was a pointwhen I had a codeto your front door. People had the wrong idea about us.No socks on the stairswas one of your…
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