Poetry

Sometimes I’m a little birdflying under the sassafrastree—strange planthas three kinds of Leaves—Simple, Mitten, and three-fingeredGlove—last year they chopped you down Sassafras I thought you Dead / stump ground downto nothing / now I lay that yellow birdunderneath—found she needed sassafrasto cure her aching head, fingeredand tearful lying on a floor of leavesas if she…

We put allour eggs in onebasket case—a guywho is one egg short ofan omelet. Everyone aroundhim walks on eggshells and no onedares say he has egg on his face. You’vegot to break a few eggheads to make an omelet,he blurts. His cabinet eggs him on, remindinghim of talking points—life starts as soon as spermhits an egg….

The albino boxer blitzed through the backwoods—more chaos machine than dog—barreling toward me once more through brittle blackberry briars and frozen birdbaths,and, again, I blasted my air horn with its hideous boom that made possums faint and pole barns shudder,but not once had that dog ever hesitated, the threat of her still plaguing my mind…

What happened?Eight-year-old (or nine-year-old) HenriettaKing whose job it was to empty chamberpots. Always the job of the lowest caste—Dalits, burakumins, or here as (was Henrietta)—slaves.Eight-year-old (or nine-year-old) Henriettadoes it here or rather there.Yes, here it is done by little HenriettaKing, a slave. Hungry half-starved worked hard.The Missus put out a piece of candy to seeif…

Surprised by ageand then my father diesActually dies, actuallyChanges form & goes, physicallyInto a small rosewood boxImploded like a star, negativeOn a little table under an awningI have to trust is put into the earth

You let that drop, and I know where you’re from.I know the verbal tic of my hometown—the one I ran so hard from with my kid,some books, and mended pocketsful of hope. I seen it shrug off cornfields like a coat,lie bare and cold and calloused with concrete.I seen it lose steel jobs, oil jobs,…

I live in the basement of the lake.I live on the bottom of the moon.I pry her birch bark loose, grazefor centipedes that swim the heart-wood beneath. I burn the prisondown and climb the gate. Morningafternoon and night, I kiss my jaileron his thin white lips. I am two crowslaughing in a poison eucalyptus. I…

In the dark bedroom, moonlightthreads the latticed door.I hold out a bowl of warm noodlesfor Mother. She wipes droolfrom the corner of her mouth,rose-cotton scarf tied around her head.Blood moon bathes our feeton the cold granite floor.Begonia unfurls a leaf. In two weeks,she will be gone.All autumn I shall lie on her cot,absence swathing my…

Hearing the news scares her into wordslike boobs, then my girls comes bobbling out—but her daughter’s words are serious (diagnosis)and she tries to listen but just can’t keep herselffrom reminiscing about her hourglass figureand men she dated years and years beforewho called her Sweater Girl. Silence.Will this daughter give up? Or like the deershe sang about in church, crazed with thirst,crashing through…