Crips, Bloods, and butterflies.
   A sunflower somehow planted
in the alley. Its broken neck.
   Maybe memory is all the home
you get. And rage, where you
   first learn how fragile the axis
upon which everything tilts.
   But to say you’ve come to terms
with a city that’s never loved you
   might be overstating things a bit.
All you know is there was once
   a walk-up where now sits a lot,
vacant, and rats in deep grass
   hide themselves from the day.
That one apartment fire
   set back in ’76—one the streets
called arson to collect a claim—
   could not do, ultimately, what
the city itself did, left to its own dank
   devices, some sixteen years later.
Rebellions, said some. Riots,
   said the rest. In any case, flames;
and the home you knew, ash.
   It’s not an actual memory, but
you remember it still: a rust-
   bottomed Datsun handed down,
then stolen. Stripped, recovered,
   and built back from bolts.
Driving away in May. 1992.
   What’s left of that life quivers
in the rearview—the world on fire,
   and half your head with it.

The world undresses 
its wounds. It wounds. This Father— 
His memory, torn 
clouds: forgetful weather. 
God’s goodness licks 
bowls bone-clean. Our fingers 
twist crumbs from air. 
We are hungry children 
abandoned by our country 
for bombs. For Rockets’ Red glare. How 
could we ever be patriots? 
My father is my flag. 
The national anthem is 
every word, every single word 
my mother could not whisper— 
could not say, 
could not say: 
her father colonized her. 
Made her mother nasty with jealousy. 
Could not say: she can’t stay 
In this world of touching. 
It maims. 
It elects evil. 
It is two gendered. 
It kneels on Sunday. 
The Lord is 
American & 
aims His rifle 
at us, His children 
once beggars 
rise into guerrillas.

Editorial Assistant.  Executive Assistant. Administrative Assistant. Writing
Center Director.  Writing Teacher. Receptionist.  Poetry Fellow.  Technical
Writer.  Barista.  Waitress.  Applying  for three jobs a day  doesn’t get me a
job.  I get an offer from the diner and then the diner burns down.  I flop an
interview  at the local  Subway.  I make a couple  hundred a month writing
blogs for hotels  I cannot afford.  I write a  blog about Benjamin  Franklin’s
Ghost House.  It’s a chalk  outline in the ground where his house  was torn
down.  I have a   Ghost Life.  My friends  all get jobs.  I know  because  they
each come to  the bar with a polished eye around their neck.  The eyes can
foresee  only positive  futures.  In the future,  my  friends  eat  takeout and
rescue  a dog.  They  have children  they’ve  made  on purpose  and  call  by
fashionable  names.  I try to  look into  their job-eyes,  and  the  eyes  close
their bulbous lids.  The lids make a horrible smacking sound like someone
closing their mouth to go hmmmm—then not saying what everyone knows
they  want  to say.  Was my phone  voice too  weak?  Did my neck  look too
brittle  to hold  a  full-size job-eye?  The lease  is running  out  much  faster
than my life is. Every day,  my apartment gets one-cubic-inch smaller. The
walls  get  so short  I only have  room for the bed.  I lie there and dream of
having any real job. 

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

^{to Mary Rose}

Here is our little yard  

too small            for a pool  
or chickens   let alone 

a game of tag or touch 
football       Then 

again   this stub-  
born patch  

of crabgrass  is just 
big enough      to get down  

flat on our backs 
with eyes wide open    and face 

the whole gray sky  just 
as a good drizzle 

begins                   I know  
we’ve had a monsoon  

of grieving to do  
which is why  

I promise    to lie 
beside you  

for as long as you like  
or need  

We’ll let our elbows 
kiss     under the downpour  

until we’re soaked  
like two huge nets  
                    left  

beside the sea  
whose heavy old

ropes strain  
stout with fish 

If we had to     we could  
feed a multitude  

with our sorrows  
If we had to  

we could name   a loss  
for every other  

drop of rain   All these  
foreign flowers 

you plant from pot  
to plot  

with muddy fingers  
—passion, jasmine, tuberose—  

we’ll sip 
the dew from them  

My darling                here
is the door I promised  

Here
is our broken bowl Here  

                        my hands  
In the home of our dreams  

the windows open  
in every  

weather—doused  
or dry—May we never  

be so parched