Poetry

From the roof of the horse barn, shinglesof ice begin their irreversible skid.Hoofprints frozen last December appearfreshly stamped in muddy earth. It’s been winter so long, he fears the thaw.What will become of the shadow-selfthat glided beside him, after the Chevywas parked at the Marathon station, and they skied the drifted shoulderof the rutted, unplowed…

—after Ghassan Zaqtan Dawn breaks slowly hereand the rosefinch makes its ablutionsin the nascent light. Dust has passed usby as has a westerly wind, and now the quadcopterschatter their morning songs. Minaretsare strewn about the city awaiting a proper burial.The shepherd prophets are long gone, dear poet,but the conquerors linger and every daymore of our…

Abandoned railway station, Texas desertDecember 4, 1900* Here they touch people all nightwith the mouths of rifle barrels. Thatis how the guards tap out their countof one hundred and twelve Boricuasgoing rigid inside this chilling box. I close my eyes, I countthree white shirts rowing night’s current.Youngbloods who ducked the guards’ bullets, they mustcount on…

When I think of perennials, I do not think of you. I do not thinkhoneybees hovering over petals, nor the sex organs of galaxiesof apologies. I think of your mother, rough as an oak’s charmeyes dark & lacquered, two seeds of a riot. She’s not a cronebut she crops weeds, threads her fingers through goldenrod.She…

I leave the midnight to find your beginningby way of a village weathering into ruin,by means of men coerced into combat by way of an empire shepherding the workof death. I am here in California and you arethere in the Annamites. I seek you by way of retreat, refugees fleeing a line of fireby way…

October’s late vermilion, or the sound a cast stone makes in still water,a starkness to mark the loamy edge of becoming—wants a flashof white flank and mane recedingbehind the glimmering scrim, shadows moving in—a chill wind spinningin the creaking treesgathering themselves close—needs a stream, a shoot, a faraway spring, muskof dead and dying leaves—foxfire, brackish…

—Bullwinkle When you dieyou cannot know you’re dead    and no onetries to tell you either. A small treeof memories rustles in your head, whilea Motown song just wheezes. The last thing you rememberis a doctor shrugging off the cure. You feel for the light switchbut only find that token doorless door. The quiet grows like…

For a few months, I lived in a place that was cold. When I stood at thefront door, in the foreground I saw a lawn covered with snow, in themiddle ground a house being built, and in the background mountainsthat were white and craggy, like clean teeth. The house being built wasa box of raw…

I I learn how to breathe underwater—spring vacation, 1978. Aunt Nayyer takes me to the Caspian where the stray herrings die by the sable shore. She raises her arms in prayer for all the bounty we haul home and feast for dinner. Each fish the size of my hand. All brine and grit.Carcasses stack over our palms,their dorsal fins…