Poetry

Contact Sheet

Her studious efforts to construct and maintain partitions as between varieties of touch, which appeared as the blur between affection and sexuality, were rigorous in proportion to the real absence of boundaries designated by these terms. While the contrast was not sharp, it was still painful. Like trying to pry physiology apart from feeling: once…

from Aturuxos calados

Regard a tree. Who would have better seized light’s longing? Longing a labor is first, is first. First the cold path of it. (Bring water.) Egregious                          is a few steps over wet stones                          hai ailala                          or you might miss it   Shirred up, wet against the grain silica might call out                         …

A Postcard from Okemah

Turned from the camera’s eye, hovering, between river & bridge, the hung woman looks downstream, & snagged in the air beside her, the body of her young son. They are tassels on a drawn curtain; they are the closed eyes of the black boy who will find them while leading his cow to the riverbank;…

freedom

freedom is what you can buy with a song. after the song has been soldered into your lungs. after the song has beaten its way inside your dreams. after the song has snuck its way into your bed. after the song has knuckled you under. after the song has festered and blossomed and festered again….

Picking Up a Job Application

A spring wind hustles hundreds of pages into the street, discarded leaflets like pieces of a shredded textbook under the feet of high school students let out for lunch. A young woman bends and grasps a flier: sliver of promise, passport to enter through the golden arches, gateway to the west, up escalator to immediate…

Cruelty

The furrows deepen on your forehead as you watch the TV story of Chief Joseph. Later, as your amber eyes—two villages, fade into the darkness, I deliver a knockout without mercy, “Does marrying me make you feel good?” Some have been known to bob up with “Somewhere in my bloodline is a Cherokee.” Your sad…