for Esbjörn Svensson (1964-2008) This ocean: simmer of handed-down fishscales & salt spreading from here to whatever’s after like soup spilled on a transcontinental plate. Here, starfish pucker up with Xs where their eyes should be. Here, in the sweet effervescence of nearsightedness, the ocean simplifies in its own gravity. Half-done shells are split then…
If your dream comes to life and the houses on our street lift themselves up and walk off on their leggy stilts and find different roosts before you come home from school, I will meet you at the spot in case of fire under the dying pine—whose roots are not legs. But promise me: if…
Out on the shine off the street there is the reflection of the coming bustle of dawn, of plastic and bolted steel, neon and industry caught in the asphalt. And as the grass sweats—the groan of machinery echoing off masonry—the dust rises, sewing itself in the fat of trees, shining the faces of men in…
The study of History is the study of Empire. —Niall Ferguson I cannot enter. To enter that room, I would need to be a man who makes History, not a girl to whom History happened. Mother to two daughters, I guard their lives with hope, a pinch of salt I throw over my shoulder. To…
That story I told you about suffering Was a lie. I never wandered into The woods with a pack of matches. Truth is I was born there, and there I ran the weather. Deer left Apples in my hand, so I didn’t think To cook the deer. The secret of my Life was my life,…
You’ve given me some hairy forearms, God, and a dark patch on this heaving chest. And, now, I have written my screenplay, eaten the buttered meat of the calabaza with my children. Smiled at a stranger for no goddamn good reason. Blasphemed. Not like Job; I’m reductive, a snot blower, piss-stained this morning, underweared, I…
A chef cuts off your coo, your iridescent neck, eases a small planet from your belly. Once wings and lift, you lie beneath a pinch of black pepper, onion, feel yourself brushed with butter, browned; sense yourself inside an oven: its intimate sky. Your brain was once a compass housed in a binnacle; your beak,…
Somewhere between here and Louisiana, I changed Pants. The money I carried, each quarter I counted And counted on is missing. Men and women bear Kegs and cartons, bananas and eggs. I need Sugar, some smokes, a single can of coke To get through the margins where I write, Metaphor=tenor+vehicle for children who beg To…
Pity the soul for its rotten luck For not being plucked ripe from the air. Whole days spent in cars. I want to wrap the trees like Christo, Invent a salve for the illnesses of my affections. All is silent here. What the fortune-teller Imparted is enveloped in another language. How I struggle just to…
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