Poetry

When the little bulls, so-called, rained down From passing rainclouds like little bullets Unexploded, wishing only To scrub themselves away on their armored backs In postures of convulsive surrender; When we, trainees, young men and boys With imperfectly formed morals, flipped them Onto their sticky ridged bellies With wooden spoons, then nudged them On their…

Over-aged, over grave, overlooked brother Seeks adjoining variable female structure Covered in chocolate, cinnamon, molasses, Freckled, sandy or sunset colored flesh Expressively motored by a blend of intellectual Fat & muscle while several complex & simple Emotional frequencies pulse along her veins. Must be a careful & moderately self-indulgent Cinematographer, modestly self-conscious, reasonably Self-important, spiritually…

A brother versed in spiritual calisthenics And cowboy quiet seeks funny, lonesome, Speculative or eye-glassed lass. Shopaholics Welcomed. Also Prince fanatics, museum Cashiers, & pragmatists conversant (lipstick Or no lipstick) with a hipness substantial Enough to contract around a muscle as well As expand around a child. Fear of boredom is ideal. Fear of dereliction…

You have a gun but to use the bullet You decide your wife, having snuggled it Under her tongue, should then smuggle it Into your pie hole but she swallows it. You have a gun but to use the poison You have your son dip a rose in venom So strong the smell alone will…

Maxine Waters, being of fire, being of sword Shaped like a silver tongue. Cauldron, siren, Black as tarnation, black as the consciousness Of a black president’s wife, black as his black tie Tuxedo beside his black wife in room after room Of whiteness. My grandmother’s name had water In it too, Water maker. I have…

“Carry on,” they say, Even if you carry nothing But your own desolation, And how much does desolation weigh? It’s like an armload of sirens. When I walk through the meadow, When I walk down the mountain valleys, When I walk in beauty I try to remember who I am. Nothing doing. Out there in…

There are moments I smooth the crumpled folds of my life and read them like a map. Travel all roads at once. I meet you again in a small town we reach from opposite directions, a place where no one knows us yet we’re immediately known: two strangers. The map’s creases make as much sense,…

The baby-faced cholo in front of me gently drops a divider bar between what’s his and mine. On my side, a six-outlet surge protector for my computer, and a fireproof glass cup for my Lux Perpetua candle, a votive so powerful it self-destructs. On his, a plastic bottle of store-brand vodka. It’s noon, but somewhere…

For the families of the deceased buried in Jewish Cemeteries desecrated since January of 2017 They came with small rocks and pebbles to place on the holy ground where gravestones had been turned over and desecrated. They came with their relatives’ plot numbers scribbled on scraps of paper. They came with tears in their eyes,…