Poetry

I lay down next to my child as she sleeps.Three years ago, she was a ceramicistmolding the elasticity of my skin—(A foot! A trail inside the sand of me.) Now, she is more than half the length of my bodyas I lay next to her—She rolls over toward me, heavy with sleep— The only feeling better than…

To the Memory of Lee “Scratch” Perry20 March 1936 – 29 August 2021 Source of echomadman of propheciesbuffering nonsensein absence of anythingsolid as cloudflungfrom the wombpale pallid asteroidbelt of nanny goat conjuror of the ill-spokenad-libbing in shadowa race in a curveas an old woman’s palmbillows the blue lightinstance of an ant’slegs twitch beneaththe headless Nobodytrickster…

My life,you were a door I was givento walk through. Dawdlingin lintel and loosestrife as much as permitted. Your own glass knob,I spoke you: a sentence, however often rewritten,ending always with the same slightly rusty-hinged preposition.Sometimes, for mercy, hidden.

Was it my parents’ sour grapes that have setmy teeth on edge? Or is this bitternessin my mouth from seeds I’ve sown myself? The woman I leftweeping in an East Village restaurant.Or maybe the one I had to wrestle back from a seaside cliff, an empty fifthof Maker’s in her fist. I want to sayI’m…

It pushes its way through, a luminous thing. Cactus, radiantwith small blunt thorns, sharply glisteningcolumn. But also, in a room without walls, a load-bearing wall, a mastwithout sail on a hovering boat. Straight as a nail, shadowless. It’s my mother’s picture, she took it in the woods. The columnwas found among smelly ant-hills and ever so…