Poetry

I had a dreamover and over as a child in my shimmering morning-light room,—it was set there, where I slept, woodpeckers hammering at the eaves,the river’s waves’ light moving as if forever on the far wall.I’d wake (still asleep) in the dream —I couldn’t speak!— as the two hands hovered.So that even if I thought…

They come jittering into her life from the past,brunette like her mother, wiryand tense, wearing garments blackas anthracite chopped from the city’s heart.Complaint rises like music or smokepast the elegant lamps of their facesas they settle their fringe and nail polishonto our secondhand couch: men, mostly,but the theme could be anything,children, money, uterine cramping,low brilliant…

Nothing was foreshortened but love, those daysof the iced-over river and penniless Thursdays— Iowa, where the news finished with the lateston pork bellies. The paper was named the Press-Citizen, a contradiction in terms. We eyed the neighborswith their post-midnight record hop, Led Zeppelin blasting the arm’s-width of the alley.The injuries of our twenties were recut…

Everybody seems to be pointing things at one another these days.The cop with the radar gun pointed his radar gun at my carand my car pointed back, its rearview mirror,to give the policeman an idea of what hurt looks likeeven if you do deserve that ticket,going 90 in a school zone during drop-off.Problems point at…

Because the cemetery was having a BOGO sale(“buy one, get one”) and real estate dear, my mother bought my burial plot the yearI turned eleven and broke my leg and you appeared on the cover of Sports Illustratedin the platonic ideal of a pink-and-yellow swimsuit, a form made merely of paint,a garment that covered but…

When my white friendsturn to me, upsetat my indifferenceto their conversationabout Michael Brown,I point at the lone cue ballI’d been rolling aroundthe table. I spin it and saythis is one revolutionI can control.It’s how I compressthe conversationinto metaphor.It’s the only wayI can articulatemy understandingof race in America.I ask them to ante upquarters. When the cue…

I am an anagramof my father. In America,it is anapound. It is an archaicsystem of measurement.I have my father’s eyes.I am made of lettersI didn’t learnuntil I was five.A is for assimilation,which is an anagramfor cultural exorcism.If I say I’m gladI can speak English,I mean to sayEnglish is an anagramfor God’s tongue.I mean to say…

My mother helped me write the first poem because I knew it wasn’t           safe in there.                 Weary people, she began—the cigarette smoke drawing                     sadness in the air                               (as if I should do something with all the people).                 Walk the streets fell into the next line because it was all I                     could make happen….

A horseman was found horseless on the side of the road. We asked afterhis horse, but he had no recollection, of a horse or of his having been ahorseman. And so how were we so sure? How did we know this was aman who lacked the very thing that defined him? We knew because weourselves…