Poetry

At the Musée Gustave MoreauI looked at all the surfaces whileyou explained the stories. At the base of the spiral stairswe bared our eyes at Les Chimères,a painting pale and unfinished. What a heavy task he set himselfto finish with color and formall the empty limbs, I thought. Agitated by outlines, you read:He stopped working…

“See, one day, not now, we will be gone from this earth where we know the gladiolas.”—Aracelis Girmay But not today. today there is no funeral& no need for a burial shroud & a casket.in this room we are alive—each one of ustending the flowers that bloom on the smallearth of our hearts & watching…

Apparently I am this crying guy,eyes full of analogue worldin the gap betweenolive leaves, acknowledging the sea,acknowledging allis fucked as kidsand philosophers say and know best,but okay,for a silver-leafed span,storied but brief in the gap betweenolive branch and grief,I make this noise.It is enough. In the gap betweenbefore and gone already, my fatherand sister were…

How long would it take to growan Eastern White Oakeighty feet tall in your own backyard? And how longmight it take to burn oneall the way down? Could you shoot that on your phoneand let your battery run downuntil the ash at your feet is cool to touch? Even now, I canfeel grubs tunneling undertheir…

Look                                        even birds sing in mourning.For the first time in years,a dove in the front yard builds nest,quietly patterns her return with bundles,weaves tiny broken thingsin work of a home.Whereas even the desert still offers itself, a pursuitunfolding unlike our bodies, just constellationsor chain link fences. The first time I hold between my palmsthe remnants of…

It’s what the phlebotomists always say, gushing when I slide up my sleeve, straighten my arm to boast bulging channels evergreen like spruce, leafy green like a spring mix, they bubble with delight palpating each protuberance, each tubular translucence swimming just beneath my skin, I suppose they are, perfectly plump for puncture, these outcurved creeks, transporters of blood—I’ve been thinking about blood, I’ve been thinking…

Does the rabbit know the fox has also turned to snow?You don’t raise pigs for milk.Wind pursues what it has blown away. Rain fallsgently on the city and its sirens. We’re more water than dust.Every umbrella is a big top.And childhood is a name for a visionary state.If I didn’t try to teach, I’d have…

They call this extravagance a “spectrum.”The pack of lupine howling out a deep-throated blues.The fiddleneck’s golden arpeggio.The hoot of fuchsia emanating from a parliamentof owl’s clover. Surely the wild hyacinthdidn’t mean to bring me to my knees,but here I am brushing bugs from tiny petalsas she wanders from one color to the next,declaring each to…

When someone says It’s the middle of nowhere,they don’t mean New York or Boston or LA,they mean where you and I are from—Tennessee and West Virginia,Kentucky and Mississippi and Alabama.Those rural places where our lives are unfolding.Where my grandmother Maria Garcia Peña is laughing her big golden ringsof laughter in the kitchen above a frying…