Poetry

A tiger shark Swims from the mother stream, Away from danger Or hunger, to an unknown Planet orbiting a dreamer's head. My grandfather came from Trinidad Smuggled in like a sack of papaya On a banana boat, to a preacher's Bowl of gumbo & jambalaya, to jazz; The name Brown fitted him like trouble, A…

All the doors in my home are open. There's a pulse outside I want to hear. The phone's unplugged. The pastiche of you on me would be unforgivable now. If there's a god squirming around she sees me & is me. I wish the birds were souls, invisible. I wish they were what I think…

I'll miss formality; Although it showed how I Wore sneakers on a Saturday, I'll miss the Sabbath, Although it showed how I Was spiritually unkempt and common. I'll miss the Sabbath For how it rose, against gravity, above all Spiritually unkempt and common Rituals of the unritualistic, For how it rose against gravity, above all,…

Figs & plums & stolen Red apples were sour When weighed against your body In the kitchen doorway Where July Shone through your flowered dress Worn thin by a hundred washings. Like colors & strength Boiled out of cloth, Some deep & tall smell Made the daylilies cower In early evening. Where did the wordless…

I am always hungry & wanting to have sex. This is a fact. If you get right down to it the new unprocessed peanut butter is no damn good & you should buy it in a jar as always in the largest supermarket you know. And I am an enemy of change, as you know….

I think you are my son now that I see the stalwart light on your hair, layers of composition, plucked cello wrist, bear down the spine I gave birth to, wracked note and sheet of clearest music, pitch, scale the beating trout under your areole, halo of rainbow, pleat the dear earth of your waist,…

Right up there this side the Five Chimneys Corners      about a mile south the Oneida line, this goddamn granddaddy sugar maple block I tell you it's      what you might call a real out-size block a old-time ball-busting son of a bitch of a block laying by the side      the road where that house with the…

If you could shuck your skin and watch The action from a safe vantage point You might find a weird beaty in this, An egoless moment, but for These young white men at your back. Your dilemma is how to stay away from That three to five second shot On the evening news of the…

You raise your face to kiss me in public— we've never done this! Women before mah-jong customarily press lips, or after a long ordeal—war, torture, childbirth—will lift their countenance to drink that gladness and risk of another woman. So Eve, drawn backwards, kisses her image, water, before the Strong Arm of the Law leads her…