Poetry

Translated by Lars Gustaf Andersson and Carolyn Forché   When I was about to leave,  I was held back by the word “out.”   I turned around, always prepared,  in a labyrinth of my own.   When I was about to enter  I was held back by the word “in.”

Translated from the Brazilian Portuguese by Ellen Doré Watson   I inherited this house, which has one room I avoid, paralyzed by its icy air. I keep to a smaller space where virtues and laughter, even a few seeds of joy remain intact, retain some life. But when I behold the massive entryway, I stiffen—smiling…

Double golden shovel on a line from Vera Nazarian’s Dreams of the Compass Rose   In the throes of my 41st fatherless Tuesday, I am strapped deep and down in the gut of a turbulent Boeing—keyboarding, wrestling dactyls. I wonder if the desert, a hundred grandiose death-drops below me, is still that celluloid desert, the…

Dear L,   It’s 3:19 a.m. I just fed  the baby while my son screamed, I want to sleep in your bed! We don’t let him  until the sun wakes up,  that’s the rule. The sun is still in its bed, we explain.  He counters, But I’ll be really  quiet. I promise. His plea, I just want to hug…

I loved an addict once & the tactile universe— sometimes my hands still shake uncontrollably.   I would like to be inhabited at regular intervals measured by sundials. Anyone can be a place   in America: a moving target, a strip of glistening sand, a clitoral appendage, a systematic reshuffling   of parts. My own…

I am a child of the sea but I’ve always lived by rivers   they’re never the same when the moon is full I stop in wonder   when winter comes I crawl in my cave I used to love the city its buildings and clamor   now I’d rather walk in the woods and…

In Westwood, California, our professor, whose name was, he told us proudly, Yiddish for fucker, careened through Merrill. Goethehaus I pronounced ‘goathouse’ and the professor’s modus operandi was startled. Farnoosh scrawled it wasn’t me on our copies of ‘Lost in Translation.’ Who is Gunmoll Jean? We were too shy to ask. But she did. Lee…

Long ago people made gods of palm dates and prayed to them. But once they got so hungry, they ate their gods— then wandered, still hungry and lonely, in search of succor. Finally, these people conceived the idea of worshipping gods as ghosts in machines— inedible gods of metal, stainless, perfect, and tireless, except that…

I will die one day in this land and you will fly back a single bar of me packed in dry ice. The airport dogs will sniff the carousel for traces of live matter and the cacao-nutty smell   will send them whimpering. Make sure I’m conched right: neither too gritty nor too emulsified, tempered properly…