Poetry

The lilacs on the roadside are rusting. They hold up clusters of lost light, soft brown stars that wrinkle and go dead. The deaths I keep coming back to send up a sweet smoke, the slow burn of decay. On the forest floor, pale vellum leaves; rain-tempered pine cones, stained with resin: pine branches drying…

Casting for blues my treble hook, troubled, as I think of it, acquired only seaweed. The junk fish swirled counterclockwise beneath the tiny pier chased into the air by blues in a feeding frenzy, pressing up from the shallow bottom, driving the school of mutt fish crazy with the herd impulse of natural participation. The…

I lift my blouse and pop a breast into his mouth. Clever with a grin, a ring of eight pearly teeth like beads on a rattle, he is careful not to bite the hand that feeds. He closes his eyes, anxious to settle down and begin the slow swim back to the primordial waters, sluggish,…

Breakfast by the roadside, my vehicle shimmers like an opal. I'm hunched over a map, savoring the odor of burnt catfish. My carriage is a frisky nightflower on wheels. At this rest station I am careful not to cause injury to the heather, though organisms smaller than arithmetic routinely vaporize upon my approach. So even…

1 We stood so the day slanted Through our dime-store magnifying glass. Girls laughed & swayed, caught On the wild edge of our scent. A scorpion of sunlight crawled Each boy's arm, as we took turns Daring each other to flinch. Not Knowing what a girl's smile did, An oath stitched us to God. 2…

A single shout and you were not the one I thought you were. Cowed by stoplights, horrored by the barking muses. I would never get over those boss-beaten days. Mile long arms. A city dense as a broom closet with a baby in a basket. The Judas in the eyes of passersby. One spot of…

Mama Elsie's ninety now. She calls you whippersnapper. When you two laugh, her rheumatism Slips out the window like the burglar She hears nightly. Three husbands & an only son dead, she says I'll always be a daddy's girl. Sometimes I can't get Papa's face Outta my head. But this boy, my great- Great-grandson, he's…

1. My country material— once aerial as a name—has dropped its soul where ruminating camels cave like children, eyes uppermost. And under their hooves in the sand dolls and scrolls burn and a poem calls to its poet who doesn't respond. Sand melts into glass pocked with the turquoise bubbles water looks like. These are…

The invisible man inside me is crying. He has lightning in his head. His hands fool tentatively with my breasts and all of his legs are dry. The invisible man—I have him surrounded. He is crying blood with his bones in the soup. He is a walking air meal. There is meat in his hair…