I’ve attended river baptisms in the Cahaba,church baptisms in Columbiana prop.I would’ve done a grand dunk myself, I think,had I trusted a single man to touch me.Only my first love I trusted and then onlybecause he found my body repulsive.It felt cruel, forcing him even to witness my arms.For a long time it comforted me…
We’re green and ambitious as money.Stretching, we drag as we rasp.We climb slow as blood pressure. Watch.Blindly, our yawns ache for sky. Stretching, we drag as we rasp,shiver, billow, and claw.Blindly, our yawns ache for skyspreading a red-threaded tent. Shiver, billow, and claw—these are the ways we encroach,spreading. A red-threaded tent—circus of hunger and choke….
The Albino, he made me Human chatter and history, they ate me I am of Mary’s strong armsfor the way she’pound bread’s doughsay they Say they,my eyes—not sockets—but twinkling blue I’m lookin’ right at youSee how full, how rosy they are?I have Lisa’s lips … and the thick, thick maneof she who wouldn’t shut it If only,…
She’s the outline of noir, lipscinched in an eclipse as when her girlhood sank into sea waves brushed with fog,where the wraiths of twilight women drifted unmoored like manesof galloping horses through her night’s itinerary. She recasts them rib by rib,unlocking their bodies from wreckage, their eyes kindling in Cimmerian shadeas they flow molten gold through mythic ruins slung in…
A woman named Gloria tells me that all the treesin her neighborhood remind her of zombies. In my backyard, a crew came and cut down the big tree.My neighbor laughs at how barren our once beautiful yard now looks. My people used to speak in a language of words that looked like trees.The alphabet grew…
Called widow makers because their branches fallduring droughts. They sever their own branches to conserve water, to save the whole tree. As if cuttingoff a hand to save a whole body. How does the tree decide what to drop? This one dropped two limbs,one onto a car. It only took the men a day to remove the…
No matter where I went todayI was not Michael.I was not even the shadowof my middle name.No name took my place,no name was asked.When I sat on a benchthinking of you, tryingto see your face,I was not Michael—I knew because the rainchose to fall nearbut not upon me,and it wasn’t to makean exception.People were walking…
Friday—first day of fall Two friends, two beers each. One has just held the hand of theother’s dying mama, regaling her with tales of her son’smisadventures. He’s moving to Houston the next day, far intothe flooding swamp. Mama is quiet, peaceful, pain-free. Go, shesays, go have a good time. After the two beers the friends…
My roommate was having an argumentwith his girlfriend: It’s the wrong key. No it’s not. Well it isn’t working. Once you and I had disagreements like that,I ended it. But there was a pointwhen I had a codeto your front door. People had the wrong idea about us.No socks on the stairswas one of your…
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