Bodacious
FOR ARCHIBALD J. MOTLEY’S BROWN GIRL She’d walk up and take the sandwich from your hand to feed her kids She’d wear red ’round her rear on Sunday to Sunday service Her lips were painted red Her nails were … Continued
Poetry
The Almost Audience (for Phyllis Wheatley)
Of Senegambia and seven, she should have been of the not-to be-taken, the not-high price, for a not-prime boy’s a girl of the unsuitable labor (birth not work)—and that years away. (Some of the captured, their spirits: … Continued
#106LinesOnBlacknessForWhitePoetsAndPolicemen
Both of my parents are blue-eyed I worked as a housekeeper at 14 I never wanted blonde hair My first accomplishment was controlling my rage I learned to use chopsticks from the Hare Krishnas I’m allergic to … Continued
A Dependency
You can lose your brother to Hell and still be happy inside your house. The house has many rooms. You find elegance in its brown walls and furnishings, and though the flames that rush past … Continued
Crying
Instead of crying on your shoulder I cry on the internet. Instead of crying I make allusions to crying by cherry picking the subjects. Instead of crying on his shoulder I build a fountain of black amethyst … Continued
The Necessity of Saints
Not to measure my height into the clouds And cheat in the reflected vision, So judge myself soberly, In a way a superior force has dealt with faith: These things were told me on a sidewalk; Once … Continued
A Rare Condition
After being poked & blood tested by the specialist who spoke Hmmm In several dialects including an obscure amputee sign language I eavesdropped On her conferring with beleaguered foreign colleagues by the soda machine, Whispering vowel-heavy polysyllabic antiseptic gibberish; apparently, … Continued
Drafts of Love: five poems
translated from French and Arabic by Susanna Lang and Kay Keikkinen A woman walks by hands in her pockets once she has passed out of sight I’ll forget your last words I no longer know if … Continued
Sonic Hedgehog
The gene named for a fruit-fly larva, I read, which when mutated sprouts bristles all over it. One of those genes you better have just right or horrible things can go wrong; e.g. you wind up with … Continued
Interrogation V ||| Diode
He isn’t giving me any answers. His book of scripture is open on the floor. If I lean in close, with my lips next to his ear, He whispers back verse after verse. It’s no use … Continued
I dreamed my mother condemned ||| BOAAT
my lingerie I’d accidentally sent her a photo of myself in the new black cling-wrap meant for my lover my thumbs go loose after 2 a.m. … Continued
And Are We Yet Alive ||| The American Journal of Poetry
The woman has a Salt Lake stormcloud for a hairdo. She yells from her wheelchair like a man whose prayers have gone unanswered for years. There’s no one else in the hallway. The flesh of her neck … Continued
Self-portrait before Penalty Kick ||| Prairie Schooner
You are on the line the ref’s whistle opens a cloud opens your stomach its shrill is something you swallow a silence opens like a door and on the other side are one thousand closed mouths … Continued
[If the rain is everywhere]
If the rain is everywhere and it is we will soon be taking to the boats and carrying with us only our most precious and lightest things: the birds, in pairs or in flocks, two or … Continued
Home with H
Translated from Danish by Thomas E. Kennedy Especially in spring in a large party it is clear which persons are closest to death: They don’t know why they avoid each other’s gaze One stares himself blind … Continued
The Space Traveler’s Father’s Missing Brother ||| Superstition Review
Picture this: on a planet at the edge of a spiral arm, a kid brother leaves an apartment. And never comes back. As if the apartment door opened onto the pull of space, and he fluttered … Continued
AUTOBIOGRAPHY ||| Dunes Review
My mother’s eyes—a green sometimes blue, or gray— my father studied them the way he studied light with his camera lens constantly, there was a sadness, Slavic and cloud-like. My … Continued
Kudzu Vine ||| Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation
Translated from the ancient Chinese Book of Odes (Seventh Century BCE) The kudzu vine has spread to the middle of the gorge, heavy with leaves! Orioles fly by to gather in the bushes and practice … Continued
Totem
Hatched from the wet egg of a sculptor’s eye a quarter century ago, it grips its squat stump, wings outstretched as if to dry. Its bones are wires, its plumage ragged strips of pages torn from my … Continued
I never meant to be mean ||| Crab Orchard Review
Though it happened. When I threw the plant across the kitchen counter, I never meant to crush its unstraight stalk crude with green sureness, cracking pottery chips across the tile floor. I meant to scoop handfuls of … Continued