poetry

  for Tamir Rice   the officer stops   parks his car at the frost chipped curb the officer can see the boy and spends a few more moments in the heat of his patrol car   he studies the boy … Read More

  on days when he’d been exiled from home and you had yet to learn to travel the crease of your mother’s brow   you’d sit with your father   in his father’s old pickup truck across from the runway … Read More

  I caught the smell of sick on myself, sweet as talcum or skin. My god was exhausted. My god was a glitter. My   mama called sweat a sheen. My god, my mama said, they wouldn’t call it the … Read More

  I went to love because I wanted to believe   in the self as a place that deserved its own destruction. I dwelled on the inside of my   body as a room & found it lacking light,   … Read More

  A fine way of looking at things— me observing you kissing me.   How decent of me to pretend I am shocked by you.   You’re the inverted foot that starts a line: that start of a climb that … Read More

  Why is it so stubbornly in winter? Drifts everywhere, salt shortage. For the men hawking roses in morning rush, nowhere to stand but the street — they’re gonna get hit. The book on exospheric travel wants to know ARE … Read More

  They do not rest or come to Earth, neither Common Swifts nor the crescent moon   in flight, but the Hale-Bopp swings near every few thousand years, and we were out   on the hill above the parking lot, … Read More

  Tonight the moon is out   on parole—no room, no light   of her own, although in the right mood   she can drag her black dress across   a continent or simply   disappear. Sometimes by the sea … Read More

  The boys follow the moon still hanging early morning and don’t even acknowledge it. Seems sometimes the crows will shake up the cornstalks and John’s not stuffed with straw. The boys follow the crick out past where the paupers … Read More

   I’m awake again 5 a.m. walking around the house again bare feet on unsealed tiles            again sleep crusts eyes morning’s ritual becomes clang clang putting pots away          I should brush my messy hair stop to eat & … Read More

  Logan, you took your glass eye out for me.                   It wasn’t the taking out that I needed   to see, but the pink folds beneath. We            … Read More

                      I am unable to lead a life based on illusion.   –Eleanor Roosevelt   Blue eyes, lustrous hair and unfortunate chin. Many hats, many papers. Your alcoholic father took … Read More