poetry

  +++ for Chen Chen A fathom used to mean the furthest distance a person could reach. A yawn—like chasm, chaos, or hiatus—is another name for space. Chiasma: inside the globe of the brain, there is a dark place where … Read More

  • One of my dad’s favorite jokes starts like this: “I can’t believe they got back together after all that shit!” • Some nights he just left, and when I tried to reach him, I’d hear the silence my … Read More

    Like a curse, I am drawn to my bookshelf, to the title page of Motherless Brooklyn. Here, I find your name and number written in the left- hand corner, blazing with your orange scribble. Its simplicity shocks me—an … Read More

Around fullness you barely knew from noon the late light falling in cinched with red southing shadows ++ along a yard ++ maybe mine in the hardening dim ++ a stand of blooms / the violet faints ++ slight and … Read More

  +++ some women are born in flight a first flush summer in memory it seemed to have never rained you were warm like the walkways red under chinaberries swollen under the thirsty season + red is the color + … Read More

    Single white alienated female seeking a companion to stroll the dark night of her soul. Be advised, this is not a sexcapade. And aside from my knack for killing, I am not one to rouse a body. There’s … Read More

  The woodpecker that ran into my window is dead If only I knew taxidermy, I could bring it back to life Up close, each feather looks hand-carved, like the Black Forest cuckoo clock +++++my father keeps in his office … Read More

  At the estate sale, 70s porn fold-outs drape over the bedspread. When you’re dead, everything is laid out for sale, even your porn. The man running the sale tells me it’s not porn, it’s vintage porn, as if this … Read More

  1. In the graphic novel the hero drives death the way a rancher drives livestock. Four-legged, voids pour from the hillsides—the shape, not the shadow, of extinction. 2a. +++++++ The death drive as fund drive, as telethon. Last breaths … Read More

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 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