Poetry

“Even if you are not ready for the day / it cannot always be night.”—Gwendolyn Brooks Even if you’re not ready for anything Black, it cannot always be white.Even if you’re not ready for the women, it cannot always be the men.Even if you’re not ready for the spectrum, it cannot always be a binary.Even…

I came from the center of a coal-rock.I hatched when a bird built a nestfrom its straw hair and sat on mewith its whole heavy heart. * One evening, the lightbulb hangingfrom the kitchen ceiling began to flicker.The bulb threw its swinging light at the kettle,which began to look like a speckled egg. The kettle woke to the lightbulb’s despairing voice at…

Captive air, captive words, only eyes scan the world.Broken doll with no tongue, little grace still remains.Angry words, all she hears. Selfish tears, she is told. Captive air, heavy lungs, innocent mind holding shame.Little girl, turn the tears into clear, lucid words.Let them shine into light; let them glow in the dark.

You’ve warned me about this, my machine—the threat of linear stains on paper, floodingover letters when you’re copying my pages.Your glassed-in mind is usually mimetic.But when something goes wrong, you’ll startto leak a gray scrim, as when a monk spilled wineon his inked annotation in the thirteenth century,freeing what I have to see as ghosts…

Look, I never swore to be as modestas a Victorian ankle, and sure, God blushedat a few of my prayers. I flush the hallelujahsfrom my skin before bed and let heaven gnawat my window’s light. My diary is a privateweather of regrets, but I refuse the shameof the moon. You can’t make me robe myselfin…

stolen apricot hair lotion,peeling accusatory aspirational posters,opening the sex drawer “accidentally,”spoonful of black ice rocky road,universal dismissive degree certificate,pocked ceiling of cottage nothing,breathless sound of the keyin almost a door, trees in still poses,filthy shoes in pairs for the doomed ark,time passing overhead,single cloudiness, O hourglass days,wasted sand, was it rightto scribble leave him under the one…

Quodlibet For a laugh, let’s list the things I lack:a foreskin, first & foremost—that was lootedlong before I noticed it; a knackfor foreign languages—my own included;memory—for all that I’ve alludedto; belief that gods or ghosts exist;the drive to love—& all that death’s polluted.Looking back, this is, in fact, a listof what I’ve had & lost…

Night whisperer, your hair’s tangled skeinof silver brushes our brows and the pastcomes crackling back, each jolt of joy or painas fresh, as strange, as when it struck us first. Daughter of thrumming earth and voiceless sky.Flame-keeping saint, yes, and two-timing slut;barnacle, shedding snake, and butterflyat once. Or farmer, sowing rows of doubt. To Zeus…

The image is of anOocyte breaking freefrom its containingcell wall an almost full moon framedby a whisper curlwhippoorwillof cloudthen later a rainbow      tinged frame                from below like a sill portends a bonfirefor May culminationsYour birthday again Your experiments        are Experiencestranslated into French O so tiredbut seethe lines connectingyou & meme & thee & he light goinginto me goes…