Poetry

Neighbors smuggle the sunthrough tunnelsbeneath the houses.The smoke of bombsdropped from the F-16shas covered the city’s sky.

At my first history class,the only students attendingare the future, the present, and the past.As I step in, the future gets ready to leave,while the past straddles the present,handcuffing it,severing its hamstrings,and dyeing its clothes gray.

She did not play horsey on the hardwoodfloor. She did not neigh, nor did she whinny.She had some things she wanted to write down:something about her father and his gunsand his alcohol and her trite love for himthat never got to pale in comparisonto the blooming chest-fire she would have feltif she ever held her…

Don’t let me end up a mural on Bryant St.Sound of a cheap lighter heating a joint. Hiss like deep inhale from a fresh joint,large worries can be made small with a mouth. Large worries made small in Sunday’s mouth:aunties’ lips while they sing, victory is mine I dream and sing, victory, today, is mine,eye…

The Germans have a word for you—schnappsidee—an idea                    fueled by margaritas or shots of tequila or bottles of vinobianco or rosso, you know the ideas that maybe involve a road trip                    to Miami or California and you wake up in a parking lotin Mississippi or Delray Beach with a dead french fry stuck                    to the side of your…

As a child, I hid to read your waves,nothing can lie in water.I wanted to peek throughyour wreckages, wrap your windaround my breath,I wanted to keep your sand,shells, and all your shores.The water’s reflection slowlypeeled fear from my skin,women sang to the shipsas if the world was breaking outto carry the cloudsto the other side…

We think we canfind the beginning,the origin, the genesis. We look everywhere,the nativity is nowhere,Jesus is absent. The land is lost,it doesn’t speak these languages.The sea keeps its own history. We keep our own imagesof our bible,our Terra Santa. When you cameyou found what’s modern,what’s wretched, not your holy, and back thenthe olive trees weren’treplaced…

The oracles say the quiet part out loud.A wife is a machine of someone else’sdreams. To survive, you must drown a heartthat wants to float, muscle atrophying in salt.Make an artifact out of your pain, a tributeto the girl you used to be. Ignore the hot pinchin your chest from holding your breathfor a decade….

I figured if I studied enough, life would make senseso I skipped the games and the girls, ate lunchin a hurry and spent the afternoons in the library. On Saturday nights when everyone was outgunning their engines, I camped alone at the beachlistening to the lap of waves and the chittering of birds. Flashlight in…