Poetry

Back in the drafty hovel, the fishwife nonetheless wants. My daughter pats my cheek, asks what I want. Too much, I sigh. The moment already lost in her childhood past.

There's a photo of you that we all love. You're wearing your “Surf Russia” shirt, a beer in your left hand. John says it's typical that you have alcohol. You're standing near both the camera and the door as if you had it in mind to leave us all along, waiting for the right time…

I didn't know much about Marilyn Monroe the day she died. I'd heard her name. The world's most beautiful woman has killed herself, said the newscaster. I saw her stretcher on the black-and-white television. I was visiting my cousin's fiancé's house—visiting strangers. But the news about Marilyn had me squeezed on the couch in that…

Elgar: Enigma Variations, Op. 36 For what does my longing long? Can I sing my own epitaph? Exactly how infinite are you? Military intelligence. (Military intelligence? Is that what I said?) In laughter hope and despair meet. Play it for me, Sam. At my funeral.

Hey Tard! Dan and I just decided; we’ve gone celibate! D’ya hear?! We ain’t gonna have sex no more! ‘Course we decided it down at JR’s. It was like a proclamation. Dan got up on the bar and yelled, “I hereby declare that I shall never have sex again!” But you know him. His vow…

Like holes punched in a tin roof, thinks Diverne. Up North, night don't mean nothing. Just like day. She wears good herbs. She prays. She'll never learn to quiet night's deep silences the way the African women did: they could bring the island stars down close. Up North so dark seem like somebody dying. When…

Frail warrior, at first there was no breath      in his body, Boy-Turning-Blue,      so when he opened his abashed lips to praise the day. . .      When did you falter, Thought-Woman, when did you fall asleep,      and fail to give him his eagle-feathered bow,      his little arrows of exhalation? And where the blood-warmed air should be,…

These are words without music In a mist that almost made rage mysterious. In silence like the silence after barn burnings, We cannot speak of what happened. A mist almost made rage mysterious: Your fist on my car window, my jaw. We cannot speak of what happened On a dirt shoulder in the dark. Your…

to Alma Graham I am a slave girl, twelve years old,      speaking across centuries. They chose me because I was pretty, young,      a virgin, dispensable, and all unknowing, but I know how they will pile      heaps of corn and pumpkins upon my carriage and fast seven days      and offer their own dried blood to me…