Poetry

Now and then, you heard the copters Flying in search of inmates who’d escaped. Mostly, though, it was quiet. At night, outside, The cats would fight and fuck and knock shit down, The couple next door would simmer in heat Or bitterness. Sometimes you saw them, In the window-glass, appearing Like quarter-moons through mist. There…

1. A cage can be a body: heart in the night quieted slightly; mind, a stopped top. Clock spring set. Hand in motion. The fact of the hollowed nothing head. How did we come to this? Inch by inch. I was born, borrowed from the beast; I was now property in a country where chain…

At the age of eleven, he composes a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies. Finds it easiest to hear people when they’re asleep: a sound that comes from their dreams. Secretly takes his pulse several times a day in flesh and in vain. Pascal despairs of the husk, delights in the spark, fears…

I’m only a human. Always is only in me as long as I last. What do I want? Don’t ask. We forget who we are. Conformists all alone looking for a fake mirror and finding it in some poker nobody sitting across the aisle. To be like some other and feel that. While I am…

Sometimes, I’m tired of being a mother, weary of holding her in my mind, her words brighter than mine, the light’s movement on the rock. Look, I say, Listen, to what my daughter said. (tired of being) reasonable and calm, answering to Mom and how sweet (the sound) my name in her mouth, her mouth…

When they run out of meat                men disappear. I chew         my hair, a kind of fullness that is kind, a thread                soup. A nest gathers         its strands inside me. The dead hatch, translucent-eyed,                wire-boned, small         whistling through beaks. We share our (secret)                feast, miles of hair to keep         us warm. I rock on my heels…

Because my son is as old as the stars Because I have no blessings Because I hold tangerines like orange tennis balls Because I sit alone and welcome morning across              the unshaved jaws of my lawn Because the houses on my street sleep like turtles Because the proper weight of beauty was her eyes              last…

You expected to see blood dripping through his clothes                                        —writing prompt from a student so you kept your distance so you closed your eyes so you ran as fast as you could through that garbage strewn alley, down that street lined with dilapidated cars. You did not pause to consider the wound—who or what caused…

           I can turn the space of him over in my hands. See if it comes apart, if it’s permeable. Does it keep time, shrink, dissolve on flesh. Does it bounce. Can I back that thing up. Can I see if it stands, if it cuts correctly. If it can clothe me.    If I can I…