Poetry

Before she died, my mother practiced turning herself into stone. Now she sits—a rock on my father’s grave, six feet above his reach. Each spring he punches a hole in his roof, sending up a riot of yellow flowers to tempt her into softening. The tendrils of his need claw the air, grope to touch…

I don’t wear long dresses because bad things always happen when I do. For Kai’s wedding, he hit his head skinny dipping afterwards on the cement by the pool, ended up in the ER while his bride slept, her father an inappropriate Gemini questioning me all night long, sober like the righteous lion. I wore…

Everything threatens—                     benches meant for children occupied by old men   who clutter the playground                     and interrupt the slides where a schizophrenic takes   interstellar dictation.                     I’m looking for a way out— not a way down   and play the game                     of sidewalk juxtapositions: cons versus dot coms   crazies versus kids                     in superhero shirts….

The boy won’t fall asleep                     without books, pictures             before bed of polar bear             who never leave a scent of blood against the ice,             watered down tales of jolly             rotten pirates setting sail.             The cannons shoot coconuts.          …

We have changed only in our teeth all of us look vaguely 19 but hard-lived for 19 I overheard     it was a half-joke like your daughter she’s so easy to love   to my father     and we all laugh     back home a hurricane is shaking the water and even here     rain     you look a little like a morgue     cold skin and…

Plow your tweener backpack  into your fellow sinner.   I was fallen too.    Sulk into your years  and cropped organdy nails.  Everybody’s watching.    Your body’s burnt to ash,   to the stranger’s thumbprint  on your stubborn pimples.    I see a younger you,   a candle-smoke ghost  hardening into form,    fleshy knees and fists  marbled at the altar rail.  You’re still the baby    who asked no deliverance.  We’re not…

is about sorrow the same way the 56-ounce bag of red white and blue M&Ms is about sorrow. The former has a chorus in which Jurado croons is in your arms while the latter features text—resealable zipper!— at bag’s top because if you’ve got something too stupid to say aloud you should shout it. 71˚,…

The last time I saw my fathersound and marrow-filled, he was standing on the front porch—almost the weight of a ghost. As I waved goodbyeI felt a nerve twitch— like a dog’s ear batting a fly.He never sold me the world. He never said that peopleare good. But the next morning when he stopped like…

I don’t often revisit the year I fosteredall the neighborhood strays, teenagers enticed by decay and overrunwith the lesions that wistfulness deals. I don’t often revisit the year my parentsdisappeared, but whose house we filled with smoke so indissolubleit consoled like blindness— the year pedestrians crossed the streetto avoid my yard, alive with ragwort and…