Poetry

My Friend Wears Ohio on a Chain

For Willa Frierson, the whole family, the Kenyon Review’s Young Writers Workshop, and for Gambier, Ohio: the most magical town in the world.     Because I came home I became estranged / but in a soft way, like how … Continued

Society

    The hunters at the gas station under the fluorescent lights. The man in front of me lets me go because I’m a woman, it’s long been a ruling that women and children go first. Waxing towards full duchess, … Continued

Filling Station

    On my way up north I stop to fill the Honda up. I like to time the emptiness so I can fill it at my favorite place: a Chevron with a taqueria in the minimart where the Honda … Continued

Algorithm

    The Boardwalk lit up in constellations of tilt-o-whirls and loop-o-planes, and I can’t find a word to express loneliness that brilliant and hard-won. I have a stillness in me that’s yellow-paged and bramble-lashed. I think the word I … Continued

I Am a Spongiologist

    I wrote a book called The Book of Disorder I wrote a book called The Atlas of Tics I’m famous in supraliminal circles I wrote a book called The History of the Sponge It has devolving syntax I … Continued

Eat Shit, Horseface

TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH BY DAVID BRUNSON   When I think of freedom I think of Isla, my mare, And I think of a photo of my grandmother, Gorgeous at seventeen. She remembers, in those days, When a man told her … Continued

Patria o muerte— ¡Venceremos!

TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH BY DAVID BRUNSON   I joined the socialist party at 16. That is I lived through the flowering of a failed state before losing my virginity. We watered the votes with our voices, The revolution was our … Continued

Dominion and Volume

    He crows to prepare our yards with his presence, and he orders the space between us. He stands it up straight. Inside his own sound, he is the world itself, not of it. He populates our yards with … Continued

Joke

  When I mention a crush I have on some boy I’ll forget in three weeks’ time or never, call it love, Scuba, my closest friend, rolls his eyes, shoots back Did you pee on him so he’s marked as … Continued

The Prophecy

Holding my death in his mouth I’m reminded of a cat Snapping a canary up All blood and blonde feathers and grey fur Tiny beak and talons no match against that Merciless beast Poor creature  I have arrived here And … Continued

A Poem to Behemoth

    FOR ALL FORMS OF POWER ARE FORMS OF VIOLENCE AMONG MEN. —MIKHAIL BULGAKOV, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA I gotta get my mind off the pulsing tightness in my chest so my psychiatrist has asked me to think on … Continued

Novoandina

    My children stopped eating when we moved to this country. Their sandwiches come home untouched in their sacks, whole apples, whole crackers, un-nibbled pieces of cheese. Breakfast, they refuse fruit, toast, yogurt. They sip dew-beads of water from … Continued

Failed Essay on Shapes

    Mother tells Girl, who chews the word like bubble gum.   Or, newly toothed, Girl really chews an elephant’s helping of gum.   More interested in blowing a bubble than in the names of what she can see. … Continued

You Whom They Border

      you border crosser in this simulation you constantly slip and call one border by the other’s name the names aren’t straight inside of you and you conflate one with two because you still yearn for another border … Continued

You, Amateur Interpreter

  You would have told yourself as your mother sat in the dentist’s chair, had you known who Wittgenstein was then, “I have to imagine pain which I do not feel on the model of the pain which I do … Continued

Anniversary

      I haunt you because I love you. You are constantly surprised by this. I am made of papier-mâché. You have dreamt of this before, a serious matter. You delight in torment. We were made for this. I … Continued