Poetry

Thirty-six years till my mother is bornThe perfumes she worewhen she was young    whatever happened The bottom of her jewelry drawercalls and calls as I run her through her first school playShe doesn’t understand Stroke my stomach    mother    till I understand Why is the movie too advanced?Why do we have to stay home and chase…

Sometimes at dusk when the earth gives its sweet breath to the trees,I think how I have taken a stranger’s life and whispered notso much as his name to the asphalt sky. How each year, on my mother’s birthday, I hear the warbled raspof his breathing and it pushes and draws me like a blues…

The buzz of electricity circles a yellow bulbin Maine’s humid heat. June bugs bombthe porch light with spiny legs—date-coloredand oversize.                              Spring peepers pin the night,pitch a universe in my mother’s kitchen, exceptI have not yet occurred to her. She is sixteen,and…

To Yusef Komunyakaa When I rise from the bankthe water’s slow as shadowin my steps, thick as blood.The whole river’s secretive,still, dark as rouxcooled in the skillet, as rank,as sweet, ancient as catfish,ancienter. The moon’ssifted light clouds rumorto lilies or daffodils,an egret on the farther shore,a hunger, a stare, a patienceI could recite. We havewaited…

Thoughts have gone wolf again, hunting for reasons in the dark.Suppose we were never               supposed to fallinto each other’s arms? Made a bone-boattossed all our memories in—              watched it sail. There’s a chance I know nothing and I will stickto you like…

Pretend a boom box blasts over your shoulder. Raise your hands in the air. Twist them as if picking mangoes. Look to the right as if crossing streets. Look to the left, slowly as if balancing orange baskets. Bend as if picking cotton. Do the rump. Straighten up as if dropping firewood. Rake, do the…

watched a crew wipe the family namefrom the face of our supper club. The new owners slappeda cartoon moose on the sign out front. If I tell him I love him,either he is holding my little hand while we step across an icy parking lottoward a greasy burger joint or he is on his deathbedand…

Blackbird called Redwinged                                             and I both startle when I stand and turn. Bird expertly                       swerves, flies on; but I spend a few thousand mind…

So thin, the life we had—sometimes I could see insidemy stomach and inside my sister’s the attacks startedwe were sitting in the corner of the living roomaway from the chandelier, my mom didn’t want usto sit under it when we were under attack my sister and I her doll and minethin and tight next to…