+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ always in my parents’ dream, no- +++++++++++ body is born daughter no powdery +++++ cheeks no white night, sighs and- ante no round- the-clock wishing I +++++++++++++ were married: sink- hole my reflection & dreams bob- bled into yet … Read More
A womb sounds like a wound in my mouth. A daughter portends losses. My mother carried, in her womb, a wound without eyes. She grew up with no mother, her mạ mouthed nightly into ma. The opposite of love … Read More
Today I went looking for a word but it did not come looking for me so we remained lost to one another. I’ve not given up on what it might offer, the same way I won’t give up on … Read More
Let’s talk about the quick memory of a green onion: How—snipped down to the white and, with water and omelet dreams, leaned in a Steelers double shot glass or a long emptied jar of capers or a keepsake cup … Read More
+++“I looked at photographs and suddenly understood that a photograph +++was a letter to someone in the future.” —Rick Barot during the pandemic, my mother was still dead. & when i held out two fists, my children discovered a … Read More
No one flies kites as once they did so now I carry shopping bags across your empty lots, topple careful mounds of leaves, find the gaps in window frames to dance the flames your scented candles cradle. You have … Read More
Only certain things seem to stick. Gum beneath desks. Bird shit on windows. In a Princeton study, even physics slid away. The students were given the same test two months later, then six months later, then years and years, … Read More
The standards call for a lesson on the afterlife of each religion. The students want to know what I believe in. The priests dried the king’s body with a gold scarab neatly tucked above the heart. This protected the … Read More
I cry in this poem. There’s a difference between weep, sob, and cry: weeping is silent, I weep on trains alone. I cry in this poem. Sobbing is so loud. Sob only in private. When I write the poem … Read More
+++Following the wrong god home we may miss our star. —William E. Stafford Oh god are you there yet they wish too hard for my metamorphosis for my tongue to bend toward wisdom and sweetness for my hands to … Read More
i. a mother can devour the evolution of her daughter’s tongue After ESL class, a mother and her daughter wander into the corner where flowers crack through the concrete. The daughter plucks one of the flowers and offers it … Read More