Poetry

A tiny scarab landed in my hand. I see how this works. God just shrinks smaller and smaller with every chance you let pass, every opportunity to take the message that the horse delivers, “until God arrives as something, in the end, like you,” I said to the scarab, and with that, as if having…

In truth, who has the energy to be evil? One starts, perhaps, with bar fights, But the dentist bills alone have got to be crazy. Your money’s spent before you’ve begun. And who can actually afford a lair anyway? Wouldn’t we rather have that nice, Three-bedroom, two-bath, with enclosed garage, New roof, and exceptional curb…

Moons falling, invisible hours, my son                                                                                never leaves                                                                     our nest—when the house                                                                              is quiet, it’s most   dangerous. The air deflates to flat, a flag                                               cloaking the rooms. It scares me— this silence—his teenage shadow                                                                   beneath my door, he pauses, moves            on. His footsteps patter                                               and fade, distant like gunfire                                                                                      on the horizon. His noises muffled…

First, you carry no rider. It is to sting and eat sweat, this life, but more it is to live near windows mostly in quiet, or to wait for the fast opening, and when it comes, I want to climb down from myself. I want to leave go the bridle. So I have started watching,…

Caught on my own between homes, I had no choice but to live for awhile in the Lost and Found department of Trans-World Airline at LaGuardia Airport where I worked my first job and could not live. With a key to the dark back of the storage hangar, I made a space of lost suitcases…

Twitter: If you had a mermaid phase as a kid you’re probably bisexual now How did I not understand when I swam with my ankles crossed to make a fin or when I asked my friend to touch my arm, my skin? She wrote love you xo on my ribcage in black pen. All summer we…

From the roof of the horse barn, shingles of ice begin their irreversible skid. Hoofprints frozen last December appear freshly stamped in muddy earth. It’s been winter so long, he fears the thaw. What will become of the shadow-self that glided beside him, after the Chevy was parked at the Marathon station, and they skied…

—after Ghassan Zaqtan Dawn breaks slowly here and the rosefinch makes its ablutions in the nascent light. Dust has passed us by as has a westerly wind, and now the quadcopters chatter their morning songs. Minarets are strewn about the city awaiting a proper burial. The shepherd prophets are long gone, dear poet, but the…

Abandoned railway station, Texas desert December 4, 1900* Here they touch people all night with the mouths of rifle barrels. That is how the guards tap out their count of one hundred and twelve Boricuas going rigid inside this chilling box. I close my eyes, I count three white shirts rowing night’s current. Youngbloods who…