The Sentencing of John Punch to Perpetual Slavery, Virginia, 1640 To take a fistful of tobacco—after mixing the gnat-size seeds with sand, after scattering,after thinning the seedlings, after hoeing the knee-high hills,after picking cutworm larvae or tobacco flea beetlesfrom the dusty leaves, after priming and topping,after the cutting, hanging the leaves in the barn-loft to…
translated by Jhumpa Lahiri I found a notebook filled with poems, written in Italian, in my desk inRome. I am trying to understand who wrote them. It may be a womannamed “Nerina,” which is the only thing written on the cover of thenotebook. I’d like to know forcertain who ate that pearperfectly, with such respect,leaving…
When I press my fingertips together and makea tangerine-size space that the light comes through I see God there a little bit—a glowy something I try to press deeper inpast the flesh and bone my breath pulls into it to hold it theredeeper stillerand I worry about dying then about how my small cradle of…
No one’s gonna say it, but your baby’s ugly.It’s not your fault. All babies look like aliens.This is another thing I said a little drunkthat I meant with my whole heartand every time my mouth opens the thing I meancomes out, but it comes out wrong.The ice caps are melting. Soon no one will knowwe…
What were you listening to, Great-Gramma,down at the lake, that Saturday nitewhen you felt you couldn’t breathe? Not those loriders waxed and raring, the way souped-upcarburetors suck oxygen to dragalong the strip, your gulping breaths, gurgling,ineffective. The ambulance fetched you.In the hospital, they lopped off your thick braids(to think you never grayed!) “for convenience”or “to…
In this story the cockroach is the man,the curtain my girlhood, the creamedcorn spilled by the mother wastedfamilial love, the father’s zealotrya metaphor for emotional blindness. In this story the radioactive dinosauris the man, the city of Tokyo my bodyand the metro tunnel, well, you know.Fire is fire. Explosions are explosions.The snow-capped summit of Mount…
floating at the surface of the oil the fish is weightlessand ready to come undone between your teeth.I got to call Dan Henry, he gone want this while it’s hot. Mo rises to find her phone as if gravityhas no authority over her body, liftsthe antennae to summon this husband she had since his boyhood…
Ugly is prettygeneric (there’s enough to go around),a name flung from the mirror I duck,but I hear what it says: Your living is complete defiance. All of this was foretold in my history, shapedby storefront living in my latchkey world. My ugly is alive like a plague bredon maternal distance & rage, on a fatheritching…
Here’s how I explain it: my body has had an umbrella open for the last 910 days no, it hasn’t rainedat all but I like to be prepared & I like to be untouched / I might carry this un-superstitionwith me forever yes, like a child yes, I was terrifiedafter the election yes, I was…
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