Forget each slight, each head that turned

Toward something more intriguing—

Red flash of wing beyond the window,

The woman brightly chiming

About the suffering of the world. Forget

The way your best friend told the story



Of that heroic road trip, forgetting that you drove

From Tulsa to Poughkeepsie while he

Slumped dozing under headphones. Forget



The honors handed out, the lists of winners.

Forget the certificates, bright trophies you

Could have, should have, maybe won.



Remind yourself you never wanted them.

When the spotlight briefly shone on you,

You stepped back into darkness,



Let the empty stage receive the light,

The black floor suddenly less black—

Scuff-marks, dust, blue tape—the cone



Of light so perfect, slicing silently that perfect

Silent darkness, and you, hidden in that wider dark,

Your refusal a kind of gratitude at last.

Did tear along.

Did carry the sour heave

of memory. Did fold my body

upon the pillow’s curve,

did teach myself to pray.

Did pray. Did sleep. Did choir

an echo to swell through time.

Did pocket watch, did compass.

Did whisper a girl from the silence

of ghost. Did travel on the folded map

to the roaring inside. Did see myself

smaller, at least, stranger,

where the hinge of losing had not yet

become loss. Did vein, did hollow

in light, did hold my own chapped hand.

Did hair, did makeup, did press

the pigment on my broken lip.

Did stutter. Did slur. Did shush

my open mouth, the empty glove.

Did grace, did dare, did learn the way

forgiveness is the heaviest thing to bare.

Did grieve. Did grief. Did check the weather,

choose the sweater, did patch the jeans

worn out along the seam. Did purchase,

did pressure, did put the safety on the scissors.

Did shuttle myself away, did haunt, did swallow

a tongue of sweat formed on the belly

of a day-old glass. Did ice, did block,

did measure the doing. Did carry.

Did return. Did slumber, did speak.

Did wash blood from the bitten nail,

the thumb that bruised. Did wash

the dirt-stained face, the dirt-stained

sheets. Did take the pills. Did not

take the pills. Cut the knots

from my own matted hair.

To live without the one you love
an empty dream never known
true happiness except as such youth

watching snow at window
listening to old music through morning.
Riding down that deserted street

by evening in a lonely cab
     past a blighted theatre
oh god yes, I missed the chance of my life

     when I gasped, when I got up and
        rushed out the room
          away from you.

My mother swapped prayer for sharp screams when my
sister crowned. The epidural settled
on one side until the nerves in her left
hip became stars, dying down the dark of
her thigh. At 17, I watched a girl-
child emerge covered in only-God-can-
name. Maybe, blood-light. Star-vein. Water-
sky. A boneless sea creature who knows some-
thing about the universe sitting next
to ours. I don’t want to go back nor do
I want to die this way—making daughters.
My body has a tenure of chaos
and blood. It’s clotting and ache began at
the edge of girlhood. I see no way out.

    I have a friend
And my heart from hence
Is closed to friendship,
Nor the gods’ knees hold but one;
He watches with me thru the long night,
And when I call he comes,
Or when he calls I am there;
He does not ask me how beloved
Are my husband and children,
Nor ever do I require
Details of life and love
In the grave—his home,—
    We are such friends.

^{translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid}

And all that remains for me is to follow a violet darkness
on soil where myths splinter and crack.
Yes, love was time, and it too
splintered and cracked
like the face of our country.

My share of the people
is the transit of their ghosts.

عتَمات بنفسجيّة

  
ولَيْسَ سِوى أَن أَتْبَعَ عَتَماتٍ بَنَفْسَجيّة
فَوْقَ تُرْبَةٍ تَتَشَقَّقُ فيها الأَساطير 
،أَجَلْ، كانَ الحُبُّ زَمَناً وتَشَقَّقَ، هو الآخَرُ 
مِثْلَ وَجْهِ بلادِنا

.حِصَّتي مِنَ النّاس عُبورُ أَشْباحِهِم

The Bud Light crystallizing in the freezer

Hides high above a child’s reach

The Uncles table sits in the backyard of my mother’s house parties

The beer and barbecue footnote their good time

I go to greet them like daughter, like niece, like good girl,

They say. Like grown woman now, they say.

At what age did uncles stop seeing me as a little girl

Since when did they dress up my growth with their pick-up lines?

Each word sharpening a knife of bedside manner

Each nervous laugh covering up the names of women who don’t stay

Oh you’re a teacher now? They repeat with bedroom eyes

Teach me, they say. To my classroom, they say, I want to come.

The pork belly on the table I used to draw on as a kid

Curls in the cold air, sausage cackling char on the grill

Flatlining my red lips I paint for myself

My voice a fire extinguisher

Against all the family men who pretend family means

Things I can get away with

A myth of fragility trapping too many girls

Forced to call mercy

Each beer sip    a squeal silenced

Each man still a swine on the spit

(Mather AFB, California, 1956)

When we play horses at recess, my name
is Moonlily and I’m a yearling mare.
We gallop circles around the playground,
whinnying, neighing, and shaking our manes.
We scrape the ground with scuffed saddle oxfords,
thunder around the little kids on swings
and seesaws, and around the boys’ ball games.
We’re sorrel, chestnut, buckskin, pinto, gray,
a herd in pastel dresses and white socks.
We’re self-named, untamed, untouched, unridden.
Our plains know no fences. We can smell spring.
The bell produces metamorphosis.
Still hot and flushed, we file back to our desks,
one bay in a room of palominos.

I’m docked at a lake that

the people don’t attend.

Machete on my hip to

make a devil cough up

blood    dust and light.

Hungry for ruins of

an afternoon of anything

wild and willing to stick

its neck through the roof

of the leftover lake. I’m

docked at a lake that ain’t

got no river    in a field that

ain’t    got no fence    under a

sun that ain’t    never heard

of mercy. I’m docked at the

edge of an unfortunate dinner

next to a wet knot of Cotton-

mouths    too big to see.

Of course, I don’t know very much

    About these politics,

But I think that some who run ’em

    Do mighty ugly tricks.

I’ve seen ’em honey-fugle round,

    And talk so awful sweet,

That you’d think them full of kindness,

    As an egg is full of meat.

Now I don’t believe in looking

    Honest people in the face,

And saying when you’re doing wrong,

    That “I haven’t sold my race.”

When we want to school our children,

    If the money isn’t there, 

Whether black or white have took it,

    The loss we all must share.

And this buying up each other

    Is something worse than mean,

Though I thinks a heap of voting,

    I go for voting clean. 

          ^{a mistranslation of Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s trilogy 
          through a game of Spider Solitaire}

at all times
a sensation of intricate webs
soft, possibly smooth, and heavy

life does not mean the same to them as it does to us:
i lie on their sweat-embroidery

i am allowed to be upset here
fully plugged in
glistening and inaccessible

i eat everything and i am everything:
a garden of marble
between ornamented walls