Poetry

At sixteen, I worked after high school hours at a printing plant that manufactured legal pads: Yellow paper stacked seven feet high and leaning as I slipped cardboard between the pages, then brushed red glue up and down the stack. No gloves: fingertips required for the perfection of paper, smoothing the exact rectangle. Sluggish by…

Every day, whether we realize it or not, we choose one of two stars to guide us, a star as ephemeral as our life, a star water can wash away. One star is made of packed sugar, the other of packed salt. Water melts both. If we choose the star of sugar we will follow…

I am struggling with the first line. No, those words will not fit in my mouth. Language is neutral, the speaker is not. I can start fire with words, the pen is like a boxer’s gloves. I could dance this tropical dance with you, but my eyes are watching the lines carved underneath your eyes…

Nights standing in a field or sleeping under the stars, I sense that one of those pebbles of light must be signaling me from deep space. I know this is no more than my own longing cast like fishing line into the depths of another kind of ocean, and that my aloneness is reflected in…

I thought you were through, but like good sex, you keep coming back. Miles, what’s up with Doo-Bop? When I listen to you, I hear a car crash, a voice reaching climax, a flock of birds with metal wings aiming for the moon. Your ears danced, when street movements float through your window. Hip-Hop, Rap….

Not only what lasts, but what applies over time also. So maybe, for all my believing, not you, on either count. Any more than this hand where it falls, here, on your body; or than your body itself, however good sometimes at making—even now, in sleep—a point carry. Not this morning, either, that under the…

The history of my country is in every link of chains at the foot of Boukman’s copper statue overlooking a dusty town at the depth of despair with candlelights of anger burning in every tired palm. Low black clouds converted light into darkness, the man with a fat cigar stands in front of the black…

Far from Puebla and Michoacán men wake to pick peaches and beans. Light rolls out its bolt of cloth. Yard sales, craft shows, the six-pack loneliness of rural towns. On either side of I-95, going to Sonora, butterflies don’t care who drives more than fifty-five for a cheap pint of faith in the jackpots. Mars…

The black uncombed wig with stiff grotesque braids sits atop his broad and pockmarked forehead; and his grip on the dull tomahawk is almost woman- like. Yes, Father Scarmark’s winsome eyes and slouched spine do not befit a proven warrior. But the beaded American flag designs on the bayonet scabbard symbolize breaths stolen from German…