Poetry

Defending you, my country, hurts My eyes. I see the drums, the glory, The marching through the gory, Unthinkable mud of soldiers’ guts And opened hearts: I want to serve. I join the military, Somehow knowing that I’ll never marry. The barracks’ silence as I shave Is secretive and full of cocks. I think to…

But since I’ve written just this one poem About being black, having a black body, I know that they have won—whoever they are. And I know what it is like to wish for death. Not the way people in poems do, But the way successful suicides do—or did.

To every morning reach for the wire whisk, the yellow bag of sugar above her head on the top shelf next to dried beans. And the eggs of Rhode Island Reds that maybe were how she felt mornings before putting on her face. She was someone else making pancakes blank and plain who could crack…

The storm breaks leaving the limbs far away from being what happened, the world, like this. Wind still refuses to choose between the plumes of grasses and the roofs of the big houses. The agony of nails prying loose. The swing unhinged. The fleshy roots of an ash exposed like the paintings of Death embracing…

Even as we speak, there’s a smoker’s cough from behind the whitethorn hedge: we stop dead in our tracks; a distant tingle of water into a trough. In the past half-hour—since a cattle truck all but sent us shuffling off this mortal coil— we’ve consoled ourselves with the dregs of a bottle of Redbreast. Had…

after Akhmatova They had no time—the just man hurried across the bridge, followed God’s magistrate along the black ridge. His grieving wife lagged behind as if she had no will, arms heavy with useless things, heart heavier still. She couldn’t recall if she’d shut the door, turned off the iron; worse guilt, she’d left behind…

for Norma Crowded cemeteries Everyone builds high into the sky trying to get closer to Jesus Empty wine bottles The church bells ringing calling todo el mundo to the evening rosary Poverty as revealed through the use of flowers and bright colors like a Mexican’s house yellow   red   pink   blue   scarlet   purple You never seen…

AS As you come and go from a place you sense the way it might seem to one truly there as these clearly determined persons move on the complex spaces and hurry to their obvious or so seeming to you destinations. “Home,” you think, “is a place still there for all,” yet now you cannot…

The contractions         Have come Too soon                You are sentenced         To bed    in the country house During the tedious hours Your sons scrap             Your husband courts An imaginary lover          You summon         the living Mothers:                Hagar                        Of the bitter smile                Sarah                        Whose laughter lies                Rebecca                        Who outwits men…