I say hunger and mean your hands bitten to boneseed,
bandaged with bedsheet and the night while two states over,
a mouth—ready soil—says your name. Next June’s lover
speaks the harvest: your rich, vowel-tender song

but for the neighbor. More hello than amen. Not yet
a whole book of psalms. Choose this. Not your bare room.
Your self-vacancies. Unlearn empire’s blackness:
night spun savage, space cast empty when really

a balm slicks the split between stars. Really
hipthick spirits moonwalk across the lake ice.
Maps to every heaven gauze the trees in velvet
between that greenbright spectacle of bud and juice

and dust—I’m saying there’s no such thing
as nothing. Try and try, you’ll never disappear. 
I say hunger, mean hands you think empty
though everywhere, even the dark, heaves.

^{18 February 2021}

We've landed on the planet named after the god of war and the power's
out all over Texas my mother's buried under her grandmother's
quilt while they're looking for signs of life on the surface of the long-dried lake-
bed my cousins huddling around the clay pot heaters they've rigged
from overturned geraniums and the candles they keep lit
for the dead the heatshield reaching extreme temperatures in the final moments
of descent ice-sleeved branches cleaving from their trunks and downing
communication lines and lines and lines down the block for what's left
of clean water in the ancient river delta the rover arriving to drill down
as scientists cheer in control towers oil men feast and fatten
their pockets craters across the desolate expanse early
transmission from the hazard avoidance camera can't help
but capture its own shadow darkening the foreground.

Thank you for insulting me.

You helped me see how much I was worth.

Thank you for overlooking my humanity.

In that moment I gained power.

To be forgotten by the wider world

and the righteous religious

and the weaponized soldiers 

is not the worst thing.

It gives you time to discover yourself.

*

Lemons.

Mint.

Almonds roasted and salted.

Almonds raw.

Pistachios roasted and salted.

Cheese.

Do you still believe in borders now?  

Birds soar over your maps and walls, and always have.     

You might have watched how the smoke from your own fires  

travelled on wind you couldn’t see    

                                            wafting over the valley

and up and over the hills and over the next valley and the next hill.

Did you not hear the animals howl and sing?   

Or hear the silence of the animals no longer singing?   

Now you know what it is to be afraid.  

You think this is a dream?  It is not

a dream.    You think this is a theoretical question?  

What do you love more than what you imagine is your singular life?   

The water grows clearer.  The swans settle and float there.    

Are you willing to take your place in the forest again?    to become loam and bark

to be a leaf falling. from a great height.  to be the worm who eats the leaf

and the bird who eats the worm?    Look at the sky: are you

willing to be the sky again?  

                                              You think this lesson is 

too hard for you    You want the time-out to end.  You want

to go to the movies as before, to sit and eat with your friends.

It can end now, but not in the way you imagine    You know

the mind that has been talking to you for so long—the mind that

can explain everything?    Don’t listen.

 

You were once a citizen of a country called I Don’t Know.

Remember the burning boat that brought you there?   Climb in.

How quiet 
It is in this sick room 
Where on the bed 
A silent woman lies between two lovers—
Life and Death, 
And all three covered with a sheet of pain. 

And in the beginning,
God gave your body
a checklist:

Keep your heart
on beat
and your lungs
dancing with oxygen,
not passive to air.

Make sure
the path of your blood
slows down
for checkpoints
and avoids
bumps
in the road.

Train your nerves
to keep a balanced pace
and stay within
the lines
of steady flow.

Push forward
without putting
too much
pressure
on movement.

Remember
to return to water
when your spirit
and its frame
are in drought.

Treat your body
like a well-rounded planet
built for all seasons,

or pretend you are
an adaptable star:

Float in the black
and stay there
if you need to,

save some light
for yourself.

In other words,
rest like the sun does:

Schedule some time
to stay out of sight
when too many people
praise warm energy.

Keep in mind
all of these things

when depression
tells you
nothing is working.

Keep in mind
all of these things

when it tells you
there is no
invisible force
connecting us,

when your veins
are stopped by blood clots,

when your bones are dry,
and the water
is too quick to boil.

Keep in mind
all of these things
when it tells you
that the soul is like the body:

Made to be broken,
open to deterioration
and doubt. Yes,

keep in mind
all of these things
and remember:

Even when it
seems like
the clock isn’t ticking,

you were made perfectly
for this moment
in time.

Age four— Witnessed my first mow down

Twinkling ground stars, cut by a murderous lawn mower

Feeling the blade, I fell, curled like a snail in grief

12 full moons folded into Spring — Perennial promises prevailed

Bees celebrated return of dandelions in a skirt of twirling, yellow bliss

Flowering bouffant mirrored my spiky little afro

Jagged edged “lion’s tooth” leaves paid tribute to my snag-a-tooth smile

Me and my freedom fighting flowers frolicked to survive the

scissoring, up-digging, poisoning

Warning Signs hovered like low hanging clouds:

No Blooming Allowed; Blossoms Will be Prosecuted

These brave plants grew just for me

Grew in spite of a society that favored a monochromatic landscape

1965— Mr. Brother Malcolm X was assassinated, big word for a pre-kindergartner.

I was convinced he must have been a dandelion, Reverend King too,

and the Johnson boy who lived one turn down the street, that way.

The Johnson boy was shot by the police for growing in a monochromatic landscape.

Training Wheels Off—Bike riding across insecure cement, I peddled the bumpy path

waving solidarity to each surviving, sunburst noggin,

each fulfilling the promise to ornament lawns and flourish souls with lemon drop hope

Dandelions bare art of

endurance and escape

transforming into pearl puffs

floating with ephemeral intention

carrying the spirit of the weed.

13 Full moons faded into July — “I am a proud weed!”

Yes, I declared that shocking proclamation standing in the pulpit on Youth Sunday

Vernon Chapel A.M.E. Church

I added to my speech on David and Goliath

my impromptu improvisation of Dandelion Dogma:

“We are Black Dandelions who will NEVER be destroyed.

We grow the power of goodness for generations into the future!”

I yet remember the hat framed faces of the pious, amused and mortified.

^{for Janice Mirikitani}

I watched you survivesurvive
your thick hair and wide laugh
a list of words we were not allowed
to write into poems
the blanket is the night
you were too bright to be a star
to give blankets is an ancient trick
for you, a balm
and June who if she was her month
straddling spring and summer
with her arches, tunnels, bridges
then you, might have been her
balance, an autumn predicting
softness, snow that never reaches fog
snow that illuminates no mattermatter the time
you and she making us make words
and we brokebroke by making words
matter and you blanket and stars both and all.

I chewed into the wreck of the world,
into the neckbone of the past that pursued me.
All the while, I moved toward extinction,
bearing the burden of damage, language of the protector.

A great apocalyptic wheeze adorned me with sand. 
I foraged, first to find light dappling the leaves,
then breathed into an infinite power, feminine rust,
a coppery taste of salvage, leading me into a canopy

of the future. My mother was a mother of mothers,
modern before she was ancestral.
She was a woman who morphed into feline, back
to her human self before I woke each morning.

I lived not to sate my appetite but to crush it.
On my haunches, I craved what could not be seen.
I am desire. I am survival.
I sit under the tree waiting for hunger.

^{after the 2021 Texas Winter Storm}

I’ll admit that I’ve never thought about frostbite.

Trauma of the blood, a thing to be avoided when heat goes out for an entire state.

I don’t know where to place this grief, this sweltering state freezing, politicians breezing over to a country that doesn’t have tissue choked out by its winter yet.

The sky can only do what it does.

The American government can only do what systems driven by green paper, violence & ache can do.

The trees bloom over dead bodies, missing.

The sound of hands rubbing, engines purring, hopes that gas lights or chafing or the rapture won’t come first may quiver in my blood forever.

I am Black but maybe I am doomed.

Memory flashes like a computer screen; I see the zoom link expand. Colleagues process whatever failure number of a thousand this was this year and I can only remember white.

Six inches deep, sunken into my boots all over.

The timeline of friends stranded, impending doom of electricity shutting off, water pressure slipping into nothing every hour, pipes bursting on top of all that white.

I haven’t recovered from seeing things that too-closely resemble holes in a graveyard.  

I haven’t forgotten the project is due in 2 weeks.

My therapist says take it easy as if capitalism is listening. As if the body will ever forget what it is given.

I am Black which is history, personified.

I used to listen to Pilot Jones fondly. With all this frostbite on my fingers, I’m not sure if I can type.

I cannot finish another sentence on unity.

What is unified about ERCOT letting us freeze? Knowing how to fix the problem & not doing it; how does that form a Kumbaya circle?

If I made art about every pain I’ve felt unjustly, I would be swimming in accolades for great American books.

I would take back every word I’ve written if it ended this.

America is the worst group project.

I’m writing a great American poem about suffering.

How much is going without food that isn’t canned for a week worth?

The absence of snow feels like betrayal. My memory mixes with American delusion. 

I can’t believe half the things that I’ve been through.

Ice cold, baby, I told you; I’m ice cold.

Who said it first, Frank Ocean or Christopher Columbus?

I’ve never been taught how to adequately mourn the nights spent bitching about a brisk wind; the night we almost got stranded trying to get to J before the cold swallowed them whole.

I want to give everything I’ve been handed a good cry. Red skin & chapped lips deserve it.  

Good grief, what has Texas done to me.

An article features a person walking past tents near I-35. 

I can’t cry about the body but I feel it.

A highway splits a nation from its promise to be one.

Everything feels blurry and the palm trees have died.

Everything transported here withers away eventually.

6 months later and I haven’t been able to shovel out my sadness.

A news report said that it’s safe to go back to work. & I listen, because what else can you do in 6 inches of white.

The snow melted and I still feel frostbitten.

There are no heroes in a freeze-frame changing nothing.

I pose begrudgingly. Say cheese & then write this.

I’m not a survivor; just still breathing.

I remember grief, love’s grand finale.

What else do we have if not the memory of life before this?

I cannot tell you how many lives I’ve lost to mourning, but I can tell you that the sky does what it does.

Let’s go for a walk & touch the trees that survived like us.

Let’s write a future more joyful & less inevitable in segments of leaves.

Anything we dream will be better than this.

^{translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah}

Like the rest of you,

I thought of escape.

But I have a fear of flying,

a phobia of congested bridges

and traffic accidents,

of learning a new language.

My plan’s for a simple getaway,

a small departure:

pack my children in a suitcase

and to a new place we go.

Directions confuse me:

there’s no forest in this city,

no desert either.

Do you know a road for loss

that doesn’t end

in a settlement?

I thought of befriending animals,

the adorable type, as substitutes

for my children’s electronic toys,

but I want a place for getting lost.

My children will grow,

their questions will multiply,

and I don’t tell lies,

but teachers distort my words.

I don’t hold grudges,

but neighbors are always nosy.

I don’t rebuke,

but enemies kill.

My children grow older,

and no one’s thought yet

to broadcast the final news hour,

shut down religious channels,

seal school roofs and walls,

end torture.

I don’t dare to speak.

Whatever I speak of happens.

I don’t want to speak.

I’d rather be lost.

To Keep
the memories nimble, place your fingers inside the mouth of her hair.
The history there is one motion, told and retold by millions of bodies 
over hundreds of years. Sister, mother, grandmother, aunt, cousin, 
lover, friend, partner, braid me. Keep the tales of what we cannot forget here.

To Float
think of silted braided rivers. Now extricate the rivulets. Use your tongue.
Can you discern salt from iron or shell from shale? This is what it is like
to make a world with words. 

To Re-grow
a tongue, pull it from beneath silt at the bottom of the sea. 
If it is knotted, frayed, tangled, you can take up my voice. Look for my
feathers in dust, find my matted feathers in the surf. There, make
a nest for me. Gather shells and driftwood. Dig a small bowl
in the sand. Let the patterns arrange themselves into a beautiful thing.
Ask me to come, and you will find me on the horizon, glittering.

To Claim
you we claimed ourselves. We touched the surfaces of mirrors
with no reflections. Hic sunt leones. Here there are lions. Here are waves.
Imagine us a tide of lions crashing on sandy shores, returning for what is ours.

To Unfold
into a receptacle for holding joy, entrust your tender heart to another.
Look. We are more than our scars. We hold the memory of trauma
in our roots. And still, here is a moment of pure joy. See how our chests
shake the air with a trust manifested from generations of resilience? 
Reach for each other. Embrace. Grow flowers with your lungs.

I can laugh now.
Have you not heard my laughter?
It leads the winds:
They come tumbling and bubbling after.

I have learned to laugh.
I have learned to laugh with my spirit
And with my soul.
Listen. Do you not hear it?

I shall quench the world.
I shall sear the stars with my laughter;
Shrivel the moon and the sun
And make new ones after.

For life’s skeleton
I shall make flesh from desires;
Then of my mounting laughter
Build it a temple with mocking spires.

I shall laugh to heaven.
I shall laugh below hell and above.
I shall laugh forever.
It was laughter God died of.

There never was a garden,
only a leaving:
miles and miles
of footprints in the dirt.

In the beginning—
the shattered sun, the wind,
and nothing left but our shadows
sifting through the dust behind us.

When we turned
we did not turn to salt.
When we turned
there was nothing behind us to burn

nothing to return to
though who could blame us for turning,
with only the long days ahead
tongues tripping in the dirt.

They said we didn’t belong.
They blamed us
for leaving the garden
which never was or would be.

Where could we go,
we who had come from nowhere
and hence could not
return?

It probably started
in a whisper, a murmur,
a low tone hardly caught by the papers,
a sticker, a poster,
a brick wall with slogans in fresh, black paint
because
it probably started with a shove,
some bluster, a gunshot,
crushed fingers, it probably started
with a speech that caught the right ears
on an otherwise happy day,
yellow flowers in a wooden stand on the sidewalk,
red apples, radio
trying hard to smooth out the mood,
kid hurrying past, thinking,
God, he’s shouting
about me,
pulls his hat low,
it probably started
with another man
drunk on swagger,
it probably started
with a small crowd
coaxing exciting lies,
it probably started
with a neighborhood’s head bowed
as the drone grows each day
(though they’ll claim
it came
in a quick, monstrous surprise).

“Oh, we had an intruder alert,”
said my fourth grade daughter
when I asked how school was.

She said this
after the usual shoulder shrug and mumble.
My kindergarten daughter sang in, “Yeah,
we did.”

And I keep the car moving forward.
Even though it feels like a bird
just thwapped against a window in my chest
and this car should stop
now.

Over the intercom, the same silver strainers in the ceilings as the school I went to a long
time ago,
a voice will say, “Mr. Snow, please come to the office,”
and what is expected

is that the teacher will sharply walk to the door
and lock it, that every student in the room
will hide, will be unseeable from the block of glass targeted above the doorknob.

My fourth grader
says everyone tried to fit
in the prairie schooner the teacher and her husband built between the two bookcases,
but there wasn’t room so she tried to squeeze herself alone
behind the filing cabinet.

They tell me this
as no big thing.
They tell me this

like it’s line up, single file, quiet down,
hands to yourself, march outside.

They can’t say it
like I do now. They don’t think about it
like it’s a heartbreak
poem,

have no inclination to want to ask the NRA to give one actual moment of silence,
no inclination to know the name of the school secretary in Atlanta who
talked an AK-47 and a gym bag full of bullets
onto the floor, no inclination to think of grade school teachers
laying their bodies over students,
arms out,
lungs pulling in so hard
they could make their backs
as wide
as wings.

It’s my kindergartener.
It’s my fourth grader.

It’s another thing
that happened
today.

we are in an ark
 

not a passport in hand
 

    tinted windows and air the taste of spit  

and body oils     the pregnant woman

squeezes her abdomen     the child will not  die

in the middle of a journey   too weak   to jump  

into the sharks     no emissary in sight   we want to sing

can barely clap     a groan rises from our ribs  broken

we lick the sweat     from each other’s sweat  the mother chews

on her placenta  she wants to share  but  we allow her greed

we laugh  the wind    responds     

we pray  into    our mouths  only the breath    in God  in us

makes music    of our meditations  we mark the distance

from  our mother’s     nipples with these    fragile fingernails

what we see     in each other’s spirits  is fear    I must have

two left    the Liverpool rocks roll like they fell from an archangel’s

vineyard    what praise can we give    with bound hands

they still     out talk      with a reason    of existence

in pairs     they drag us     out like animals

^{For Dr. Maya Angelou}

Illuminated triangle crowned by the sun

                           The call of this road soft as a mother’s voice

Awaken to the living river of this road
Don’t confuse poison for sugar on this road

Get lost just to be saved on this road
Dance for your testimony on this road

Be On The Battlefield on this road

                             Use this path to step into your greatness

Be casually brave on this road
Stay fierce in your faith on this road
Tell the truth till Glory Hallelujah on this road

Step into your courage
Bolster your spirit

Know your Divinity

On the tongue that lifts faith above chaos
On the hands that built cradles when caskets were requested
On the pyramids, on the pyres, on the pulse of this new day

Know your Divinity

In the sanctuaries
In the sickrooms
In the gardens

               In the office of politics
               On the borders, in the matrix

Know your Divinity

               In the bordellos with backroom nurseries
               In the family reunions behind every prison wall

Know your elegance
Know your voice
Know your heart is not meant for storage

Know if they call for rifles someone must still bring bread

Know that last night something was said
And right at that moment, a man         a woman         was healed

 
                                                –––

 
Between the president and the mendicant
Between silk and steel conjoined above the fire
Between the tongue’s knife and the lover’s caress

              Burns the Blues (of every hue)

The call to freedom on this road
The feathery touch of love on this road

The rituals on this road
The forgiveness on this road

Praise the Spirituals hanging like fruit above this road
                            that fills our mouths
                                            yet remain whole & sweet for eternity

^{at the Keesler AFB Post Exchange in 1987 (Biloxi, Mississippi)}

No one looked after me or my brother back then, no CPS, 
no Social Workers, the SP’s couldn’t be trusted,
the off-base cops even worse.

When the P-EX mini-mart clerk told me
I wasn’t supposed to be there
and had to leave my Pork & Beans

and bread on the counter, you caught up to me in the parking lot,
my items in your tote bag.
I got caught stealing a sleeved stick of butter

the week prior, but today had returned
with the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin I found in the gutter.
All I had was that and my pocketknife for opening cans and gutting fish,

the reason my privileges were revoked.
I wish I had answered your questions—What’s going on?
Why can’t you shop here? Where are your parents?

before darting off into the night with the can and bread,
dropping the piece of money at your feet.

I think of Whitney Houston    in her sequined glamour
   She’s centerstage      It’s 1988           Her head
             Thrown back against a black backdrop     She is the only thing
      glowing       So distant                        from us in the universe

    of her voice                 She is already dying       when
I hear her sing the first time          When I slip inside
   my rhinestone leotard white tights          Before a mic
              My vocal chords are still elastic                  Vibrating harpstring

    Not yet sclerotic with unlovely smoke                    and shame
    I’m drawn to Whitney like a cardinal on a branch
in winter            Beauty too bright for camouflage                 Her story
a constellation twinned with mine. I love myself 

          because of her. Our sweet lip sweat sparkling in the flame
light. I went home inside myself too. The world became so small.  
          Secrets collapsing my life into a vacuum. To burn a little longer—
Whitney, you know           no one is coming—you must        save yourself.

your enemy has 
        the weather dominator 
        & you trying 
        to shoot at clouds. 

strategy is more than 
what the opposing team 
releases publicly. 

this seems like a given, 
                                      but not 
                                      by the way we act. 

we see war as a narrative
of stickers that glow in the dark. 

               written history fixated 
               on the parts 
               that serve our future defeat. 

               detailery camouflages 
               the battles we’re losing 
               each time we feel 
               like we’ve won a point. 
                                          made our case. 

told someone off 
  & got their goat 
                 etc etc. 

or maybe we still don’t see this war, 
because we have hulu without commercials. 

because we already booked 
tickets to burning man. 

because we got funner things to do
than read what section of 
the art of war this is from. 

what instruments are we using 
that misdiagnose these signs? 

how is there no doppler 
for the slight between friends 
that ends communities? 

why are we looking for catapults 
in the middle of crowded shelters? 

I wake up every day 
and watch masses 
        fight over bedazzled scraps
        while the source 
        drains into 
        the mouths of monsters. 

I watch the screen 
and folks can’t be bothered outside
the realm of petty resentments. 

I walk the world and too few 
           hear the weapon coming

gestating through civilizations, 
                hidden within distractions, 
en route 
to all the places 
we’ve failed to protect 
from unintended consequences. 

all the choices we thought 
were just having a laugh. 

every strike we’ve felt entitled to 
in our bathtubs of pain. 

a reckoning on the cusp 
of irreversible. 

the signal to acknowledge 
the weight of scale before 
the sale becomes final. 

At least she’s pretending to be,

in sisterly solidarity.

It’s not a joke, but the whole

world’s taking it badly. Meanwhile

I sit here pretending to be a flame 

in a thrown bottle. I pretend

that curved horns grow out of my ears 

when I hear of injustices. And 

meanwhile like the faint cigar 

lights of the darkened 

lounges where world leaders 

fraternize, the moon’s light glows

then fades. Her labor proves to be, 

well, laborious. Mine was too,

although this poem burst forth 

from my brain like a boot

or a god: furious.

When I watch the video where the violinist plays
as surgeons cut the cancer from her brain,
my first impulse is to descend into metaphor—
to imagine the plaintive cry of her violin as a singular
silvery thread that leads the surgeons—sublimely,
tremulously—through the Minotaur’s maze,
so they can extract the tumor abutting the lobe
that controls her left hand, so they can navigate
the fleshy labyrinthine folds and electric shocks
that make a human mind. When I watch her bow
graze the ventilator tube again and again,
I want to recall the old story of Nero playing
as Rome burned, which is supposed to be a story
about callous cruelty and ineffectual leadership,
but which fails to hold up under historic scrutiny
for many reasons, including that the violin
was not invented until the 11th century.
Still, the fable lends him more humanity than not—
the notion that there was music inside him,
even if it took six days of burning to fan it out,
a music so powerful it forced itself to escape
his tyrant’s mouth. If art is only pleasure,
Nero’s act is selfish, loathsome, but if art is survival—
a violin’s siren might morph to beacon
against the smoky air. I keep asking my poems
what the world needs from me in these days
of quickening dread, of burgeoning conflagration,
what they want me to do. In the comments section
below the hospital video, no one can agree
on what they’re seeing: Creepy, incredible,
horrifying, beautiful. Afterward, the violinist recalls,
I kept thinking, Get out of my way. I need to play louder.

I have a red onion in a green bowl on my kitchen counter
sprouting a green stalk that began as a little green haystack

bump, a knobby cyst, really, that broke surface, felt like what
I imagine I’m feeling for when I rub my breasts in the shower,

my eyes closed as if water is a blindfold allowing me to feel
within that dark any small homicide growing within me. I can’t

bring myself to use the onion, to gnash its skin, to whack off
its hard-on-gooseneck like I’m suddenly death’s

scythe, death’s brindled pet, death’s dappled good-girl. Maybe,
the onion believes in something, imagines itself still wild,

or holds in its layers the delusion of lilacs or iris or
goldenrod or blueberry or some other rambling growth

redacting my sense of abandon, here, in this too-large house,
a-lone-ly, not like a battle with silence way-of-alone-ness but

a passage. Quiet. Sometimes bright, sometimes dim, so, foreign. 
I am a theft waiting to happen, a rotten spell visioning

the onion’s end. Salt. Oil. Softly seared particulate
endings. Oh, onion, circular cycle, joy-halo. Grow.

When I left, I left my childhood in the drawer
and on the kitchen table. I left my toy horse
in its plastic bag. 
I left without looking at the clock. 
I forget whether it was noon or evening. 

Our horse spent the night alone, 
no water, no grains for dinner. 
It must have thought we’d left to cook a meal 
for late guests or to make a cake
for my sister’s tenth birthday. 

I walked with my sister, down our road with no end. 
We sang a birthday song. 
The warplanes echoed across the heavens. 
My tired parents walked behind, 
my father clutching to his chest
the keys to our house and to the stable. 

We arrived at a rescue station. 
News of the airstrikes roared on the radio. 
I hated death, but I hated life, too, 
when we had to walk to our drawn-out death, 
reciting our never-ending ode. 

The way, exposed to weather, a body is worn. Velvet threads begin to
wither, rapid ripened beyond the burst bloom. Vibrant strands, cut short,
fray, unweaving faded fabric. Sun-struck, rain-warped, storm-blasted,
rough-sanded in whipping wind that whittles rock. 

Small, torturous fractures opened in stone where water freezes in the
pores with grains of salt. Cracks in the surface pried apart by unrelenting
pressure. With incessant freezing and thawing, shock and fatigue speed
rugged stress to ultimate breakdown. Intemperate weather, abrading
edges, gradually disintegrates resolute minerals. 

A boulder, even a mountain, will wear down. So will bodies, bent and
broken under toilsome burdens, caving beneath unbearable weight, in
adverse climate, exposed to harsh elements, caustic rains. 

The saddest day will have an eve,
     The darkest night, a morn;
Think not, when clouds are thick and dark,
     Thy way is too forlorn.

For ev’ry cloud that e’er did rise,
     To shade thy life’s bright way,
And ev’ry restless night of pain,
     And ev’ry weary day,

Will bring thee gifts, thou’lt value more,
     Because they cost so dear;
The soul that faints not in the storm,
     Emerges bright and clear.

Almost December.   Indifferent 

to seasons     the marigolds

persist. I am surprised by their pluck

and lack of propriety

their ability to ignore 

the inappropriate: 

a rusted leaking window box

a shaky fire escape

leading to a cemented street

below. They do not mourn

that all good things must 

come to an end     and accept 

that end as fate or destiny. 

Instead      without struggle 

or assessment of soil

moisture    heat     air    they continue

blooming      in chilling winter light

exactly as they did all summer. 

if cleansing be needed for me 
to be clean, i cling then to 
the grime. the grit of sand 
under my nails not interested 
in the fire necessary to make 
glass. i cling to hair grease and 
skin oil, the fat seasoned into 
the skillet. i want 
            to survive 
the holy fire as impure 
as marbling through good 
meat, mixed as vinaigrette 
on leaves of lettuce and 
spinach. let us see sometimes 
a little less clearly: you can 
choose to be the diamond 
cut into symmetry, rinsed 
of blood; i’d rather be 
the coal stuck in the walls 
of your lungs. 

I used to think my body craved 
annihilation. An inevitability, 
like the slow asphyxiation 
of the earth. Yoked to this body 
by beauty, its shallow promises 
I was desperate to believe, 
too fearful to renounce my allegiance 
even with its hand closing 
around my throat. When I chose 
myself, I chose surrender. God 
is the river that remakes me 
in its image. I didn’t know what 
was waiting on the other side. 
I swam through it anyway. 

I can’t give you my eye,
nor a kidney, nor a second

right now. We have to hustle
up the block like antelopes
cus all the buses are

colonists. All the signs
are chandeliers, light

stuck in shambles.
I’m eating earth-

worms watching
neighbors become stars,

Grannies becoming idols, parents
become strangers. Our childhoods
were sundials. Adulthood sundered & stabbed

for the Sabbath. Our nations are out,
our capitals are overrun with word-rot.

I’m photographing the apocalypse
while watching history through the mouth

of a shield. I’m from conifers
peeling potpourri for the arrivals

needing helipads. Summon oblivion & still
I give my heart to the panthers
to the Palestinians cracking open

a skull-warm winter, screaming back we’re all the I
in nation—even when we’re scheduled to die.

^{for my trans and nonbinary students crossing the stage at Lavender Graduation}

Maybe it was you learning to walk home

cross-wise, your own safety valve.

You, who trained a tongue

chosen name, listening for reflection to speak

back. You, I’m calling you,

grew yourself at argument’s end,

slept borrowed and burned. Who

filled in space of the wisecrack, who

emptied the sidewalk, who

cleared the toxic table.

You breathed down your own street, rose tall, stitched. Built your own table, lit candles for the living who couldn’t make it back. The invitations, the city, the hauntings and the hatchets, the you, the you, the you walking home safe, opening the door, setting the table for company.

In Poland, the land takes over everything,
unrelenting in its mission to regenerate
after the war. Fields overrun sidewalks,
train stations, street corners. Purple
flowers spill from the open windows of houses.
Queen Anne’s lace reigns supreme in parking
lots. Even the dead in cemeteries are affected:
no neatly trimmed grass here but waves upon
waves of wild flowers. Blue lupine, saffron,
black-eyed Susan, chicory. The dead love
this wildness growing above their bones.
“Tak, tak,” they whisper in the hush of the wind
that scatters the soft gossamer of dandelions
into the waiting air. “Yes, yes, take over this place
that was once lost. Cover it in so much color
even the clouds, who’ve seen everything,
won’t know where death lived for so long.”

And who can argue with the dead? Not their
thin ghosts or unborn progeny. Not their
exile who returns after the war, stands
bewildered at their graves, hip-deep
in blue-eyed grass, trying to decipher names
that already belong to the earth.

Once loyal to a cruel master,
the dog moves like a man who
not so long ago weighed a lot less
and is still figuring the difference,
what if anything to make of it.
It doesn’t matter, whatever
tenderness she’s known since;
the dog, I mean. They’re called
hesitation wounds, the marks
left where the hand, having meant 
to do harm, started to, then 
reconsidered. As if a hand
could reconsider. The dog 
wants to trust, you can see it 
in her eyes, like that part in the music 
where it still sounds like snow 
used to. There were orchards, still;
meadows. She’ll never be free.

In the emptiness where depression sleeps,

I washed my grief down with a chianti-dark river, 

its bitter currents singing me into numbness. 

I raised a toast to the starless sky, my glass 

a mausoleum of denial, reflecting  

only what I wished to see. 

I wore the music like a second skin, 

let it vibrate through my bones, 

tried to shake the sadness away, 

dancing with the shadows of dust left behind. 

I sought solace in the twist of my curls, 

hoping my own reflection would morph  

into someone I don’t remember.  



What few coins I had, I tossed in the air,  

wishing on each as it fell, until the balance ran crimson,

debt blooming like roses on my credit card. 

I unknotted love from my life,  

hoping for solace in solitude, 

believing that a lonely heart heals quicker. 

It still clung to me: a bitter cologne in the summer heat.

Then I outran the sun, crossing borders,  

but melancholy claimed me in every time zone. 

In the circles of busyness, I ran, 

whirling dervish, spinning out of control, 

became as dizzying as what was within— 

my world, a blur.

This world bruises us into retreat. 
A half-life crawling back to the womb, away 
From false starts and things we have been.  
But in the house of becoming there are no clocks—
No chimes marking transformation— 
Only the whisper of possibility. An expanse 
Vibrating in the palm of your hand. 
Choices shaped like rivers endlessly branching its waters. 
Begin in your life’s timid daybreak 
Or begin in the twilight of your years. 
Our lives are a gallery of unfinished portraits.  
Each stroke—a choice. Unrestrained, untamed 
By the leash of time, each breath, each moment, 
A fresh parchment. Write, rewrite, until the ink runs dry.
Let it startle you. Become a sunburst  
In a winter sky, laughter in a room of silent faces, 
Become raindrops tracing veins 
Of a leaf, or unexpected ballads in city noise.

We were never ones to avoid pain 
even if we found him in another person.

And when we do (find him again)—
let him have not been born in the rain 

and grown up to become a storm. 
His kisses lightning that scorches the earth. 

As young girls, our grandmothers warned us 
When there is lightning, cover all the mirrors. 

But, one night thunder snapped; 
its rumble shattering the vanity.

We’ve chased cloudbursts ever since. 
Committed ourselves to flood and flight.

For girls like us who pray to the Sky Beings—  
Protect us whenever we go 
                                          where we were never meant to be. 
Put tobacco down 
for the ones

with Creator-shaped holes in our hearts. 
We spend lifetimes trying to fill,

to feel. What is the medicine for this?

Our mothers tell us (as they taught) 
Send them love. Send them love. Send [say it] love—

So, praise our fathers who left in the night,
mapping us into unlovable.

They made us tough as nails. Now we know 
how to hold ourselves together.

Praise the ones who listened 
when girls like us asked them to leave.

Praise the lovers who never returned.
You helped us no longer be afraid of ghosts.

For girls like us, 
the wound never fully heals.

The gentle rhythm of its pulse, a reminder to
praise our mothers for teaching us words are seeds.

We plant, bloom ourselves anew.
Praise the lightning. Praise the storms

we run through
because girls like us know—

this is where 
our medicine comes from.

                                        i.
As a body politic we take up space in their ledgers.
Yes, my relatives are the salvage bodies of history.

We have ways they do not approve of.
How we feed ourselves for one:

           I have been taught where to find the winter cache of squirrels—
                                                                                                and how to walk away.

            As we walk, my brother quiets me:
           you cannot tell stories until you visit the places where they make their homes.

           Father said the garden song calls the pollinators—
                                                               and we must sing in tune.

           Nimaamaa said leave some for the spirits and the little people
            (and what she meant was we are small in the green frayed body of belonging).   

           We learn from makwa, from maa’ingan—sometimes, even from Nanaboozhoo.

By this I mean not everything tattered is ruined.

                                      ii.
They believe I was built of equations for gain.
(This poem is not an anthem.)

We still follow picto-spirits,
animal tracks, and seed paths:

           Not all of our tools have price tags.

           Not all of our safeguards are weapons

           You will not find wild game in our lexicon.

Ask yourself—are we the meat they covet?

On Water Street,
scaffolds envelop the buildings,
wire screens surround the benches,
iron fences line the street.
You must walk a hot summer block
in either direction to cross.

To the east, construction continues.
To the west, trucks sit, waiting.

Approaching or leaving,
it feels like a detention center
without passports or means of escape.

Late nights on Water Street,
beneath the scaffolding,
behind the steaming sidewalks,
and the screens and the fences,
the men set up their dominoes table
and their friends watch them play,
awaiting their turns.

We wave on our way to walk our dogs
and when returning home in the humid air.

There are no passersby on Water Street,
no loitering without intent or purpose
but I will reply to the questions
they might have asked had they existed.

Why, they might wonder, do the men sit
at a bridge table in the stifling heat
beneath scaffolds, behind screens and fences?
Surely, there are air-conditioned apartments
where they might socialize and yell Capicu!

Because, I would answer, it is our street,
this is our Lower East Side that we breathe,
this is our space where neighbors smile
as they pass by and call out, Otra vez
you’re still at it, as time slowly propels
us closer to wherever we are headed,
but until we get there, the table is set
for another night of apocalyptic dominos.

We ask for peace. We, at the bound  
O life, are weary of the round  
In search of Truth. We know the quest  
Is not for us, the vision blest  
Is meant for other eyes. Uncrowned,  
We go, with heads bowed to the ground,  
And old hands, gnarled and hard and browned.  
Let us forget the past unrest,— 
               We ask for peace.

Our strainéd ears are deaf,—no sound 
May reach them more; no sight may wound 
Our worn-out eyes. We gave our best,  
And, while we totter down the West,  
Unto that last, that open mound,— 
               We ask for peace.

You were so small in my hands
no shrapnel could hit you,
but the dust and
smoke of the bomb
rushed into your lungs.
No need for any gauze.
They just closed your eyes.
No need for any shroud.
You were already
in your swaddle blanket.

It all depends on the child’s arrival. 
If it arrives in what we call The Dawning 
Hours, you’ll have to ring the bell

for entrance. In this case, 
the Dawning Hours Business Office 
will contact you with a separate invoice

for the resources expended to release you 
from the infected world 
into the lobby where you will check in

with reception. If you arrive outside 
of The Dawning Hours, you will enter 
through the ground floor of the North Tower.

You will find your own way. 
If you reach the Medi-Spa for Patrons 
Near Death, you have gone too far

in one direction. If you reach the Sensory 
Deprivation Tanks for Life Resistant Arrivals™  
you’ve gone too far in the other.

If your convulsions are so powerful 
that you cannot walk, you can 
expect a bill

for anywhere between $50 and $12,000, 
depending on whether your small sea breaks 
in transit and stains the carpeting.

And Ma’am? If you don’t mind me 
saying so, you and your offspring 
are going to want to avoid any

version of a significant rupture
—a hemorrhage, a cord
prolapse, that kind of

thing—because while your 
assigned medical professional is 
in network there’s no telling

whether the Life-Saving Machinery™  
is in network and by “no telling” 
I mean they literally will not tell you

until you get your bill, assuming 
you live, otherwise your bill 
will go to your next

of kin, assuming your kin lives 
beyond the birth, and, what’s that, 
Ma’am? No. No, I don’t know

whether your plan covers Hereafter 
Care. Do you have an advanced
directive? I see. Yes, certainly, yes,

I’ll transfer you Higher Up.

I survived. That’s all there is to say 
about the trampling. A forest or

some grand ecosystem of 
machetes hidden in cheeks.

What a mouth. The beast of the beast. 
Everything I am can kill me

or give another reason to operate 
from uneducated fear. I’m from

where love is. Bones don’t weigh a death. 
I need to have a word with all the gods

that failed me. They wear masks and 
vernacular like those whose caskets I’ve prayed next to.

They feed me pitted pomegranates full of smoke. There are 
no angels. Just good people and the memories they become.

Press your wrists to your ears. Slow the world down. 
Leave hope and learn your song. All I have are

my lungs to breathe, my mouth to speak, my legs to 
proceed and my arms to make my enemies fall.

All enemies I’ve been, fall, now. I will not hurt myself but 
I will save myself even if it hurts. My body is learning

to heal and runs on tactical forgiveness. The ones who 
lied to me, about me, on me have been forgiven

how the wind forgives the large blade swung through it. 
How the blade forgives itself for being mishandled and

chooses only to understand those who need weapons 
to feel bigger than their own body. An overwhelming

space. I burn and there is no smoke. I excavate, 
I’m wrestling skeletons out of my mouth.

I’m catching up with who I want to be. 
I’m saying day after day, I live

the harder it will be to kill me.

Sip the sea. Its salt stays on the tongue.
It burns                              like wine
               the open wound.
It heals.
                Do you have the heart to say
the truth? That it is full of strange bacteria,

indifferent to your pain. I move toward spilling out

but I will not. I will let you think the sea
is sacred still.
                       Perhaps, then,
you will try to save it.

Perhaps you’ll stand with me at the shore,
the sky now darkening, watching
the waves eat back the blueblack dunes,
shadowhills of sand, watching each wavecrash
reverberate, a drum that sounded
centuries ago, each crash a spoon scoop
more of sand, a cat’s rough tongue scraping
land back to waves, thinking, how long
until the world is sea again?
With every stone it swallows,
the ocean grows. When it laps at our
peninsulas, we take it for affection,
quiet in its claws, saying to ourselves,
this is just another sort of love, to wait
to see what happens, to stand there watching
as our feet sink in the sand, arms around each others’
waists, hoodies flapping black in the wind, our mouths
unmoving, patient, tired, only just now widening our eyes.

Cause we’re not allowed in public, not really.
My mom thinks everyone is enamored with my beauty,
But I know they are surprised to see one of us
Living. Outside is a stage & I’m a pretty player.
I love what I see on the other side of myself.
A man tells my mother he couldn’t take the doll,
Because my heels, my legs, my tattoos stopped
Him from looking me in the eye. He wants to meet
Me, to apologize for eating me from my sole up.
He’s the worst I’m aware of, but not alone in lust-
Filled gaze givers. All I want to tell my mother
About me. How they like my parts. She thinks
I’m unclockable until I speak & I know she’s trying
Not to blame me for any danger I dodge. Desire
Is in the eye of the beholder, but I live in the empty
Hands of discombobulated bastards. Disintegrate
In their salivating. I am shards of selves
They wish to suck between their teeth.

It ain’t the fancy degree
or the showboat of professors
what some call scholars
to digitize and professionalize
what Peter already knows how to do:
keep the pictures taped on the walls,
and gather folks for stories.
The tintypes he gave to the library,
that he gave away for free,
he forgives himself for giving
even though other people
are so upset but he forgives himself.

He started by keeping his mother’s promises
to remember certain things.

A keeper museum like his
cherishes and collects our heritage.
Everyone wants to come to his house
because it is alive. There’s nothing dead in there.
The fading nature of the pictures
which I think allows visitors to get closer
in the keepers history that do not look like the people
in the pages of the books,
while three miles off, the Wallace house is swept clean.

^{translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison}

for years the war has slept next to me in bed holding me in his sleep  
I have died for at least fifteen hundred nights 
in the morning he makes strong coffee with lots of sugar  
wears cufflinks and likes to strut around in high heels

I share my salt my wine without prejudice and dream with him  
he waves his cigarette holder and turquoise fingers 
drinks from gold glasses eats delicately from silver spoons  
leans on the doorway and leers with his shiny kohled eyes

in the heart of the night he plots and devises his offensive  
I see his ambitious plans and immediately cut off my tongue  
soft voices feed the arsenal inside his body 
he spins language into steely strands in his elegant hands

I plant fragrant jasmine around my throat as a border 
I embroider a cuirass from silver thread around my soft arms  
wild horses gallop across the brown flanks of my back 
I build an emergency hospital in the shadow of my breasts

I have observed the laws of war and foolishly awaited battle  
he wakes me up at the crack of dawn and leads me down to the kitchen  
stands behind me and stabs a heavy meat knife between my ribs  
the poison and the immense victories spread through my torso

he whispers crimson soft in my hair 
‘look, the first snow’ 
we can start counting the victims and the graves

oorlog

de oorlog slaapt al jaren naast me in bed houdt me vast in zijn slaap 
ik ben minstens vijftienhonderd nachten gestorven 
hij zet ’s ochtends vroeg sterke koffie met veel suiker 
draagt manchetknopen en paradeert graag op hoge hakken 

ik deel onbevangen mijn zout wijn en dromen met hem 
hij zwaait met zijn sigarettenhouder en turquoise vingers 
drinkt uit gouden glazen eet delicaat met zilveren lepels 
leunt in de deurpost en loert uit zijn glanzende khol ogen 

in het hart van de nacht beraamt en tekent hij zijn offensief 
ik zie zijn ambitieuze plannen en snijd onmiddellijk m’n tong af 
zachte stemmen mesten het wapenarsenaal in zijn lichaam 
hij spint taal tot stalen strengen in zijn verfijnde handen 

rondom mijn keel plant ik geurende jasmijn als omheining 
ik borduur met zilverdraad een harnas aan mijn zachte armen 
op de bruine flanken van mijn rug galopperen wilde paarden 
in de schaduw van mijn borsten bouw ik een noodhospitaal 

ik heb het oorlogsrecht nageleefd en dwaas gewacht op de strijd 
hij wekt me in alle vroegte en leidt me de trap af naar de keuken 
staat stil achter me en steekt een fors vleesmes tussen mijn ribben 
’t gif en de immense zege verspreiden zich in mijn romp 

hij fluistert karmozijnzacht in mijn haar 
‘kijk de eerste sneeuw’ 
het tellen van de slachtoffers en het graven mag beginnen

I with my gun 
am a good mother

I cut my daughters mouth 
on teeth 
in the oatmeal

I pay heavily 
for the meat 
I slip past her gums

so she will 
value the taste 
of blood and 
                     metal

We live in the country 
with our designer sheep

and rescued dogs 
pace the fences 
we have made of the field

let our eggs roll 
from the counter

With a bird in my hand 
trembling      until faint 
                       until not

I tell her stories 
of the sea 
of her own 
          violent arc 
she must inherit 
and shape with her small hands

to buoy the barrel

I’m afraid I was wrong about the world ending.
The man sitting on the bench—is simply a man on fire.
His fingers; reaching for solitude, something 
brief. The day becomes a sigh of pigeons digging 
For stones. I stand near the station
Too sick to notice the bench—or the man—or fire
Or whether I’ve been spared from grief.
Even the roadkill, coveting concrete, stands 
And walks. Where are those left behind? 
I thought I knew something 
About Armageddon. I apologize, 
But when the world pauses, I will sing naked 
In the heat and grow a forest of sycamores. 
Who can survive an apocalypse 
And live? I made the roadkill a god 
But I’m not allowed to speak for god 
So I wait.

^{translated from the Ukrainian by John Hennessy and Ostap Kin}

The rusty hollows inside the old mosquito
reduce his soprano to dust. Down the pipe
of his fragile beak, the pumps are already weak.
And his blood flows through fossilized riverbeds.

His gas tanks empty, song silenced, not a drop
of compassion in him ... Running on coal fumes,
the rusted engines deliver him to drill
one last buzz through the ears of the crowd.

A kamikaze who would have dropped heavenly tons
on these civilians as on military echelons
and then been posthumously awarded

the highest orders! his name on honor lists!   
banners! trumpets! salutes! obelisks!
... if my slap hadn’t smashed him dead.

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Four tickets left, I let her go—
Firstborn into a hurricane.

I thought she escaped
The floodwaters. No—but her

Head is empty of the drowned
For now—though she took

Her first breath below sea level.
Ahhh       awe       &       aw
Mama, let me go—she speaks

What every smart child knows—
To get grown you unlatch

Your hands from the grown
& up & up & up & up
She turns—latched in the seat

Of a hurricane. You let
Your girl what? You let

Your girl what?
I did so she do I did
so she do so—

Girl, you can ride
A hurricane & she do
& she do & she do & she do

She do make my river
An ocean. Memorial,
Baptist, Protestant birth—my girl

Walked away from a hurricane.
& she do & she do & she do & she do
She do take my hand a while longer.

The haunts in my pocket
I’ll keep to a hum: Katrina was
a woman I knew. When you were

an infant she rained on you & she

do & she do & she do & she do

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
                 Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.

We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
       the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
       recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
       Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
       of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—

to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
       what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.
       We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
     No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
                 if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,

rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn’t,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn’t a-been so cold
I might’ve sunk and died.

     But it was      Cold in that water!      It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn’t a-been so high
I might’ve jumped and died.

     But it was      High up there!      It was high!

So since I'm still here livin’,
I guess I will live on.
I could’ve died for love—
But for livin’ I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry—
I’ll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

     Life is fine!      Fine as wine!      Life is fine!

^{after Gwendolyn Brooks}

My wild grief didn’t know where to end.
Everywhere I looked: a field alive and unburied.
Whole swaths of green swallowed the light.
All around me, the field was growing. I grew out
My hair in every direction. Let the sun freckle my face.
Even in the greenest depths, I crouched
Towards the light. That summer, everything grew
So alive and so alone. A world hushed in green.
Wildest grief grew inside out.

I crawled to the field’s edge, bruises blooming
In every crevice of my palms.
I didn’t know I’d reached a shoreline till I felt it
There: A salt wind lifted
The hair from my neck.
At the edge of every green lies an ocean.
When I saw that blue, I knew then:
This world will end.

Grief is not the only geography I know.
Every wound closes. Repair comes with sweetness,
Come spring. Every empire will fall:
I must believe this. I felt it
Somewhere in the field: my ancestors
Murmuring Go home, go home—soon, soon.
No country wants me back anymore and I’m okay.

If grief is love with nowhere to go, then
Oh, I’ve loved so immensely.
That summer, everything I touched
Was green. All bruises will fade
From green and blue to skin.
Let me grow through this green
And not drown in it.
Let me be lawless and beloved,
Ungovernable and unafraid.
Let me be brave enough to live here.
Let me be precise in my actions.
Let me feel hurt.
I know I can heal.
Let me try again—again and again.

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

^{after Anis Mojgani and Audre Lorde}

For those making tea in the soft light of Saturday morning
in the peaceful kitchen
in the cool house
For those with shrunken hearts still trying to love
For those with large hearts trying to forget
For those with terrors they cannot name
upset stomachs and too tight pants
For those who get cut off in traffic
For those who spend all day making an elaborate meal
that turns out mediocre
For those who could not leave
even when they knew they had to
For those who never win the lottery
or become famous
For those getting groceries on Friday nights

There is something you know
about living
that you guard with your life
your one fragile, wonderful life
wonder, as in, awe,
as in, I had no idea I would be here now.

For those who make plans and those who don’t
For those driving across the country to a highway that knows them
For the routes we take in the dark, trusting
For the roads for the woods for the dead humming in prayer
For an old record and a strong sun
For teeth bared to the wind
a pulse in the chest
a body making love to itself

There is every reason to hate it here
There is a list of things making it bearable:
your friend’s shoulder Texas barbecue a new book
a loud song a strong song a highway that knows you
sweet tea an orange cat a helping hand
an unforgettable dinner

a laugh that escapes you and deflates you
like a pink balloon left soft with room
for goodness to take hold

For those who have looked in the mirror and begged
For those with weak knees and an attitude
For those called “sensitive” or “too much”
For those not called enough
For the times you needed and went without
For the photo of you as a child
quietly icing cupcakes your hair a crackling thunderstorm

Love is coming.
It’s on its way.
Look—

notice now pictures of awful things on top our head
the freight that barricades this view, how enough
how the law batter down the dogged tide we make
the world shoring its dark scars between seasons
as though to hold it together only by a flame
is here a voice to please enough the blunt
borderlessness of this grief turning our heads to rubble
the lunacy of nothing so limning as death in the streets
in these vibrating hours where the corners talk back
need I simply run my tongue along the granite sky and live

to know how lost the millionth life somewhere today
the swift shape of roads new names combust, the sum
of anthems flooding the world with the eye’s sudden and narrow
saltwater and streets ziplined with screams at the pitch of cooking pots
then tear gas, then pepper spray, then militarized lies unzipping
body bags, oh, our many many there, our alive and just born,
and that is how to say let’s fuck it up, we the beat and we the loud
tuning forks and the help arriving empty-handed
propping the hot news of new times on our head

days like these pleat whatever the hollow year must offer
between the not-yet-dead and those just waking up
it will not be the vanished thing that we remember
it will be what we exchanged close to midnight
like smugglers high-wiring the city, hoarding the thoughts
of ours we interrupted midway to discovering the velocity
of the burning world below
of our language in the lateness of our stuck and reckless love

where the forces who claim they love us
level our lives to crust—the centuries-wide dance
of swapped shackles for knees
their batons and miscellany
thrown at our whole lives demanding our mothers
raise from their separate rooms, separate graves, today
to save who and me? I open the book to a naked page
where nothing clatter my heart, what head
what teeth cling to broadside, roll alias after
alias with a pen at their dull tribunes and shrines
imagine our heirlooms of shot nerves make a life
given to placards and synergies and elegies, but more

last things: where letters here where snow in May
where the millennium unstitches the quartered earth
in June, how many today to the viral fire
the frosted rich and their forts, but not
the fulsome rage of my people unpeaced
mute boots with somber looks appear
a fearsome autumn ending spring, though we still hear

I dare not sing

another song to dig a hole this time for the lineages
of magnolias where the offspring bring a hand to cover
our mouth, our heaping lives, who sit who burn who drop
three feet to the tar, who eat and demolish the thing
that takes our head, the thing that is no more
the place that never was except a burning learned

just once and not again when the darker working’s race

I am hovering over this rug
with a hair dryer on high in my hand
I have finally, inevitably, spilled
red wine on this impractically white
housewarming hand-me-down from my cousin, who
clearly, and incorrectly, thought this was a good idea

With the help of a little panic,
sparkling water and a washcloth,
I am stunned by how quickly the wine washes out,
how I was sure this mistake would find me
every day with its gaping mouth, reminding me
of my own propensity for failure
and yet, here I am
with this clean slate

The rug is made of fur,
which means it died
to be here

It reminds me of my own survival
and everyone who has taught me
to shake loose the shadow of death

I think of inheritance, how this rug
was passed on to me through blood,
how this animal gave its blood
so that I may receive the gift of its death
and be grateful for it

I think of our inability
to control stories of origin
how history does not wash away
with water and a good scrub 

I think of evolution,
what it means to make it through
this world with your skin intact,
how flesh is fragile
but makes a needle and thread
of itself when necessary

I think of all that I have inherited,
all the bodies buried for me to be here
and stay here, how I was born with grief
and gratitude in my bones

And I think of legacy,
how I come from a long line of sorcerers
who make good work of building
joy from absolutely nothing

And what can I do with that
but pour another glass,
thank the stars
for this sorceress blood
and keep pressing forward

what anger in defiance
what sympathy in doubt
emotions steady try us
demanding every shout

what sympathy in doubt
what pleasure in our pain
demanding are our shouts
such hazardous terrain

what pleasure in our pain
mere thinness to our skin
such hazardous terrain
such unrelenting din

sheer thinness of our skin
the ruptures and the breaks
such unrelenting din
mistake after mistake

we rupture and we break
we stagger and we shine
mistake after mistake
inhabiting our minds

we stagger and we shine
we live our lives on spin
inhabiting our minds
and undermining limbs

we live our lives on spin
and thrive until we grieve
we undermine our limbs
then get the strength to leave

we thrive until we grieve
emotions steady try us
we get the strength. we leave.
what anger in defiance.

I suppose I should place them under separate files
Both died from different circumstances kind of, one from HIV AIDS and possibly not having
taken his medicines
the other from COVID-19 coupled with
complications from an underlying HIV status
In each case their deaths may have been preventable if one had taken his meds and the
hospital thought to treat the other
instead of sending him home saying, He wasn’t sick enough
he died a few days later
They were both mountains of men
dark black beautiful gay men
both more than six feet tall fierce and way ahead of their time
One’s drag persona was Wonder Woman and the other started a black fashion magazine
He also liked poetry
They both knew each other from the same club scene we all grew up in
When I was working the door at a club one frequented
He would always say to me haven’t they figured out you’re a star yet
And years ago bartending with the other when I complained about certain people and
treatment he said sounds like it’s time for you to clean house
Both I know were proud of me the poet star stayed true to my roots
I guess what stands out to me is that they both were
gay black mountains of men
Cut down
Felled too early
And it makes me think the biggest and blackest are almost always more vulnerable
My white friend speculates why the doctors sent one home
If he had enough antibodies
Did they not know his HIV status
She approaches it rationally
removed from race as if there were any rationale for sending him home
Still she credits the doctors for thinking it through
But I speculate they saw a big black man before them
Maybe they couldn’t imagine him weak
Maybe because of his size color class they imagined him strong
said he’s okay
Which happened to me so many times
Once when I’d been hospitalized at the same time as a white girl
she had pig-tails
we had the same thing but I saw how tenderly they treated her
Or knowing so many times in the medical system I would never have been treated so terribly if I
had had a man with me
Or if I were white and entitled enough to sue
Both deaths could have been prevented both were almost first to fall in this season of death
But it reminds me of what I said after Eric Garner a large black man was strangled to death over
some cigarettes
Six cops took him down
His famous lines were I can’t breathe
so if we are always the threat
To whom or where do we turn for protection?

^{For Uncle Paul N’nem}

hell nah over my dead—i paid mine. I checked
Black & subtraction knows what it did. made Black
a box to check. subtraction doesn’t know how even
a sigh seasons the roux & the second breath my mother
was always trying to catch. american. emergency.
subtraction doesn’t know Black’s many bodies & body’s
of water. though subtraction does. sunken. gifting the sea’s
new strange stones. subtraction reopened the barbershops &
bowling alleys. insists church. sent us home with inhalers &
half-assed sentences: in god - we - the people - vs - degradation
vs - a new packaged deliverance. homicide. hallelujah.
i’ll be damned. i’ll be back before i’ll be buried. i been Black
& ain’t slept since. subtraction needs my blood to water
their weapons to subtract my blood. do you see the necessity
for dreaming? or else the need to stay awake. to watch. worried.
the hand. invisible. make a peace sign. then a pistol.

                     1.

We are marching, truly marching 

   Can’t you hear the sound of feet? 

We are fearing no impediment 

   We have never known defeat. 

                     2. 

Like Job of old we have had patience, 

  Like Joshua, dangerous roads we’ve trod 

Like Solomon we have built out temples. 

   Like Abraham we’ve had faith in God. 

                     3. 

Up the streets of wealth and commerce, 

   We are marching one by one

We are marching, making history, 

  For ourselves and those to come. 

                     4. 

We have planted schools and churches,

   We have answered duty’s call. 

We have marched from slavery’s cabin 

   To the legislative hall. 

                     5. 

Brethren can’t you catch the spirit? 

  You who are out just get in line

Because we are marching, yes we are marching 

   To the music of the time. 

                     6.

We are marching, steady marching 

   Bridging chasms, crossing streams 

Marching up the hill of progress 

  Realizing our fondest dreams. 

                       7. 

We are marching, truly marching 

   Can’t you hear the sound of feet? 

We are fearing no impediment

   We shall never know defeat. 

People always tell me, “Don’t put the cart

before the horse,” which is curious

because I don’t have a horse.

Is this some new advancement in public shaming—

repeatedly drawing one’s attention

to that which one is currently not, and never

has been, in possession of?

If ever, I happen to obtain a Clydesdale,

then I’ll align, absolutely, it to its proper position

in relation to the cart, but I can’t

do that because all I have is the cart. 

One solitary cart—a little grief wagon that goes

precisely nowhere—along with, apparently, one

invisible horse, which does not pull,

does not haul, does not in any fashion

budge, impel or tow my disaster buggy

up the hill or down the road.

I’m not asking for much.  A more tender world

with less hatred strutting the streets.

Perhaps a downtick in state-sanctioned violence

against civilians.  Wind through the trees.

Water under the bridge. Kindness.

LOL, says the world. These things take time, says

the Office of Disappointment. Change cannot

be rushed, says the roundtable of my smartest friends.

Then, together, they say, The cart!

They say, The horse!

They say, Haven’t we told you already?

So my invisible horse remains

standing where it previously stood:

between hotdog stands and hallelujahs,

between the Nasdaq and the moon’s adumbral visage,

between the status quo and The Great Filter,

and I can see that it’s not his fault—being

invisible and not existing—

how he’s the product of both my imagination

and society’s failure of imagination.

Watch how I press my hand against his translucent flank.

How I hold two sugar cubes to his hypothetical mouth.

How I say I want to believe in him,

speaking softly into his missing ear.

We drank coffee and got ready,

listened to 93.3 during our commute

to take our mind off how

every day we die on tv. Every day

down the block, kids in surgical masks

spraypaint Magneto was Right on street signs

and new storefronts waiting to redeem

spa resort passes and avocado toast dreams

until they, too, are forced out of business.

Or not. People can surprise you

like beating cancer or criminal charges,

the 2016 election, the high cost

of middle shelf liquor with a decent view.

If you want to succeed, let them see you

coming, our mothers once said before asking

if we wanted the switch or the belt.

But a whooping beats sitting

at the rooftop bar looking over the steepled skyline

and feeling the pang of worlds we’d rather be,

with two empty seats right beside us

that stay empty for the next two hours

surrounded by people drinking & eating

standing up—the wind threatening

to blow their hats off their sunburned heads.

Somewhere right now

there are two people looking for those seats.

We keep hoping they’ll find them—

find us. Let’s have another drink,

watch the muted news above

a row of decent bourbon,

  

wait to hear, to see

if they make it to us or turn up on tv.

While crossing the river of shorn paper,

I forget my name. My body,

a please leave. I want a patron saint

that will hush the dog growling

at trimmed hedges it sees in the night.

I want the world to be without language,

but write my thoughts down just in case.

Send help, the dog’s growling

won’t let me sleep. I haven’t slept in days.

I am looking for a patron saint, but none

will let me pray for guidance. There is a buzz

in my right ear that never goes away, no matter

how hard I hit the side of my head

for loose change. Most mornings I wonder

who I can pray to that will make sure I never

have to survive waking again. Most nights

I forget to pray the rosary, though I sleep with it

by the bed. I’ve never owned a TV because

I’ll replay this conversation in my head.

My dead lovers are hungry in the kitchen,

so I fix them food they cannot eat. I make toast

of vellum paper, fry an egg made of crepe.

I only want a patron saint to protect me.

I only want someone else to bleed.

Guilty Guilty Guilty for actions that took my sympathy
Shackles around my wrist shackles at my feet
Prom and high school graduation these eyes will never see
My heart said, Oh well
At least you will no longer have to endure your daily home abuse
I grew into a woman unbalanced behind those wire fences
Recall (3xs) that’s all I knew
Always committing some illegal offenses straight to the SHU
These eyes have seen the bottom of boots,
Mace in the face,
The heavy blue dress while people watch you 24hrs a day,
A lock in a sock,
Shall I go on?
My heart was always heavy
when I constantly placed myself back in the same abuse
I thought I would escape
I knew I had something in me worth showing the world, but what?
Fighting my demons was real tuff
A peaceful life didn’t feel so ruff
I opened my mouth and people was shocked
That I could read, count, think, understand, listen, play chess, learn a trade
They started to see my worth
My eyes have seen a life the majority would have failed surviving
Rape, abuse, homelessness, parent-less, drugs, prison, mental health, failure
My heart became strong enough to finally love myself
And I finally looked up to the woman in the mirror 

Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.

Then we took it for granted.

Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.

Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.

And once Doubt ruptured the web,

All manner of demon thoughts

Jumped through—

We destroyed the world we had been given

For inspiration, for life—

Each stone of jealousy, each stone

Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.

No one was without a stone in his or her hand.

There we were,

Right back where we had started.

We were bumping into each other

In the dark.

And now we had no place to live, since we didn’t know

How to live with each other.

Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another

And shared a blanket.

A spark of kindness made a light.

The light made an opening in the darkness.

Everyone worked together to make a ladder.

A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,

And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,

And their children, all the way through time—

To now, into this morning light to you.

1
          I remember my mother toward the end,

folding the tablecloth after dinner
          so carefully,
as if it were the flag
          of a country that no longer existed,
but once had ruled the world.

2
          7 A.M. and the barefoot man

leaves his lover's house
          to go back to his basement room
across the alley. I nod hello,
          continuing to pick
the first small daffodils
          which just yesterday began to bloom.

3
          Helicopter flies overhead

reminding me of that old war
          where one friend lost his life,
one his mind,
          and one came back happy
to be missing only an unnecessary finger.

4
          I vow to write five poems today,

look down and see a crow
          rising into thick snow on 5th Avenue
as if pulled by invisible strings,
          and already
there is only one to go.

5
          Survived

another winter: my black stocking cap,
          my mismatched gloves,
my suspicious, chilly heart.

Admit it—
you wanted the end

with a serpentine
greed. How to negotiate

that strangling
mist, the fibrous

whisper?

To cease to exist
and to die

are two different things entirely.

But you knew this,
didn't you?

Some days you knelt on coins
in those yellow hours.

You lit a flame

to your shadow
and ate

scorpions with your naked fingers.

So touched by the sadness of hair
in a dirty sink.

The malevolent smell
of soap.

When instead of swallowing a fistful
of white pills,

you decided to shower,

the palm trees
nodded in agreement,

a choir
of crickets singing

behind your swollen eyes.

The masked bird
turned to you

with a shred of paper hanging
from its beak.

At dusk,
hair wet and fragrant,

you cupped a goat's face

and kissed
his trembling horns.

The ghost?

It fell prostrate,
passed through you

like a swift
and generous storm.

When I walked across a room I saw myself walking

as if I were someone else,

when I picked up a fork, when I pulled off a dress,

as if I were in a movie.

                                    It’s what I thought you saw when you looked at me.

So when I looked at you, I didn’t see you

I saw the me I thought you saw, as if I were someone else.

I called that outside—watching. Well I didn’t call it anything

when it happened all the time.

But one morning after I stopped the pills—standing in the kitchen

for one second I was inside looking out.

Then I popped back outside. And saw myself looking.

Would it happen again? It did, a few days later.

My friend Wendy was pulling on her winter coat, standing by the kitchen door

and suddenly I was inside and I saw her.

I looked out from my own eyes

and I saw: her eyes: blue gray    transparent

and inside them: Wendy herself!

Then I was outside again,

and Wendy was saying, Bye-bye, see you soon,

as if Nothing Had Happened.

She hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t known that I’d Been There

for Maybe 40 Seconds,

and that then I was Gone.

She hadn’t noticed that I Hadn’t Been There for Months,

years, the entire time she’d known me.

I needn’t have been embarrassed to have been there for those seconds;

she had not Noticed The Difference.

This happened on and off for weeks,

and then I was looking at my old friend John:

: suddenly I was in: and I saw him,

and he: (and this was almost unbearable)

he saw me see him,

and I saw him see me.

He said something like, You’re going to be ok now,

or, It’s been difficult hasn’t it,

but what he said mattered only a little.

We met—in our mutual gaze—in between

a third place I’d not yet been.

Death chase me down
death’s way
uproot a breast
infest the lymph nodes
crack a femur
rip morale
to shreds

Death chase me down
death’s way
tilt me off-kilter
crutch me slow
nobody show me
how
you make a cup of coffee
with no hands

Death chase me down
death’s way
awkward in sunlight
single in a double bed at night
and hurtling out of mind
and out of sight

Don’t chase me down
down
down
death chasing me
death’s way

And I’m not done
I’m not about to blues my dues or beg

I am about to teach myself
to fly slip slide flip run
fast as I need to
on one leg

No matter how old you are,
it helps to be young
when you’re coming to life,

to be unfinished, a mysterious statement,
a journey from star to star.
So break out a box of Crayolas

and draw your family
looking uncomfortably away
from the you you’ve exchanged

for the mannequin
they named. You should
help clean up, but you’re so busy being afraid

to love or not
you're missing the fun of clothing yourself
in the embarrassment of life.

Frost your lids with midnight;
lid your heart with frost;
rub them all over, the hormones that regulate

the production of love
from karmic garbage dumps.
Turn yourself into

the real you
you can only discover
by being other.

Voila! You’re free.
Learn to love the awkward silence
you are going to be.

When the forensics nurse inspected me, she couldn’t

see the tenderness he showed me after. My walk home

 

squirmed sore with night. I passed the earthworms

displaced to sidewalk, their bodies apostrophed

 

in the sun. I did not anticipate a grief

so small, my noun of a prayer, Eat dirt to make dirt.

 

Took a man’s hand as he led me to cave. So long

as I breathed, I could huff violets in his dank, practice

 

earth’s gasp. Mother lifts daughter, daughter casts

look at camera, a killer, a stick in the mud. I hold

 

my own hand. When the forensic nurse inspected

me, I described the house, historic blue. Asked me

 

to push my hips down. Little crescent moons

where his nails stabbed into me. She gave me

 

the word abrasion so gently I offered consent. Blue

as the moon when I sighed wait, blue as the no of my



throat. Abrasion, possibly extended form of red.

Harm results in a starry night too, many galaxies

 

scraped under the nail of a heavenly body. Ah my

second earth, its wounds hardened into swallowed

 

prophylaxis, an injection pooling between muscle

and skin. A woke seed. Deadarmed anti-moons

 

aggregated. A storm can travel seeds up to 30 miles

away. They dust on the sidewalks like lost data.

 

He did not intend Did not. Bloody speculum

a telescope searching the angry night sky for proof.