poetry

  A swallow, a hazardous stretch of road A tall waterfall, heard through a long night Step quickly across a vanished river Wait for rain in the flutter of butterflies   A ghost calls your name each morning Day by … Read More

  The rift lake, too, refuses coherence of any sort. Its ice encircled by trees—dark though sloeless—   whose unleafed limbs yaw untroubled by snow in its own right dense and historical. And so,   let us forget all metronymic … Read More

  “You will get through this hard time. There will be other hard times.” —Siku   Harrow harder, asper. The rude heart must continue to blurt & bluster & batter. We’ve known never the latterly sweetness he’s been after. I … Read More

  is the closest you can get to God. When I was young I was in the habit of rolling up pages from the Quran and pushing them into my back pocket, believing if I trapped the voice long enough … Read More

  If the morning scaffolds, then night prayers come. If years ago, Mother & Father ate only rice & beans, then we slept in one bunk bed & Saturdays were for chilaquiles & Sundays for church—weekly buffets & big screens, … Read More

  Looking out at the world without words   or looking out at the world with words like empty lawn chairs, collapsible in the wind, you know one thing for sure— the branches will break or wither. Someday, someone will … Read More

  for ninety-nine cents / pulpy, stringy, filmy, fibrous   the first time we were alone / a texture only you have felt   after the dust speck inside you / particle, granule, miniscule, needlepoint   spilled out, slapping toilet … Read More

  —after Walking Man II and Three Men Walking II by Alberto Giacometti, The Art Institute of Chicago   I.   I’m not alone in this compulsion to touch, to contribute one more fingerprint, my salt and oil, nor in … Read More

  You have to squint these days to taste the berry in the blackberries. Still, you eat even the bad ones.   All because the date on the package has passed. It’s a morning for toast, cold in the house. … Read More

  A skillet crackles, a raw crescent And bit of butter becoming, Inevitably, a lone browned, curved Pungent thing, a scalding mouthful   Soon slipping down a throat: consumption Always has its painful temporal logic. Let’s imagine The cooked sliver … Read More

  Flourish, unwashed, unpeeled, bouncy boys; grow, citizen-workers, clothed in good dirt— dearest ones, I place my hope in you— your green is king, in my garden. Chopped, you are cukes, (my Wisconsin mamma loschen)—fluted, celebrated, bobbing in vinegar and … Read More

  Everything is just like everything else only on a different scale. Galaxies spin like atoms, sure, but also the country has this cloud of negative   electricity around it that is only one particle stirring. I made up my … Read More