Poetry

The speaker is the young black man Susan Smith claimed kidnapped her children.     Who are you, mister? One of the boys asks From the eternal back seat, And here is the one good thing: If I am alive, then so, briefly are they, Two boys returned, three and one, Quiet and scared, bunched…

Since my chronic bad luck Vanished in my love’s deck of cards, I step around them softly, I won’t open the window on windy days. I unpin her long black hair And strip down her dress myself, Lest their flutter stirs the dead air And make the cards fly. I tell her, Don’t even think…

When my grandfather turned ninety we had a party in a restaurant in Harlem called Copeland’s. Harlem restaurants are always dim to dark and this was no exception. Daddy would have gone downtown but Baba, as we called him, wanted to stay in the neighborhood, and this place was “swanky.” We picked him up in…

The speaker is the young black man Susan Smith claimed kidnapped her children.     A few nights ago A man swears he saw me pump gas With the children At a convenience store Like a punchline you get the next day, Or a kiss in a dream that returns while You’re in the middle…

My chicken soup thickened with pounded young almonds. My blend of winter greens. Dearest tagliatelle with mushrooms, fennel, anchovies, Tomatoes and vermouth sauce. Beloved monkfish braised with onions, capers And green olives. Give me your tongue tasting of white beans and garlic, Sexy little assortment of formaggi and frutta. I want to drown with you…

Tenderly she would take them down and fold the arms in and fold again where my back should go until she had made a small tight square of my chest, a knot of socks where my feet blossomed into toes, a stack of denim from the waist down, my panties strictly packed into the size…

The leaves made us think Of a letter trembling in someone’s hand. In fact, many letters in many hands, And then they no longer did. There was a bedraggled old woman Walking With two gray boards on her back Joined into a cross To cook her dinner with, And then, We were somewhere else.

A Mexican migrant worker was kept sedated in an Oregon mental hospital for two years because doctors couldn’t understand his Indian dialect. Hospital staffers ruled Adolfo Gonzales was mentally ill because “he couldn’t speak to us to tell us he wasn’t.” These are the words you did not have to tell them who you were,…

Is infinite, said my wife, Quoting Solomon, Which made me see stars, The vastness of the universe. The one who is not a fool, Like a sugar cube that fell in the sea. The one who is not a fool Like a tarantula On a slice of wedding cake— So I covered my ears.