May I Be Excused?
After Lisa Marie Brodsky
Dear _________, would you be too upset
if I wrote a poem to cradle the soft skin
of another child with another heart
beating inside me? Will you feel abandoned
if I let them grow to larger than an olive
because watermelons are less acidic?
Dear _________, would you be too upset
If I salt my tear ducts to dry the flood,
If the corners of my mouth rise like a hopeful tide,
or if my pen gets a little less heavy to pick up?
Will your heart be broken if I craft tiny
words on the page and love
them even harder than I did you? Love,
may I please keep writing?
Staring Daggers & Donuts
A chunk of flesh
In an iron glaze
Hangs like a donut
Out the filed teeth
Of a pitbull
Your momma warned
You, because
Their pumpkin-heads
Are far too big.
In the south (Texas)
And south of south
On the edge of fence, snagged
Like a jagged shark
A father looking
Back and back and forth
Daughters missing, windnapped
Skin-too-dark
Girl look out
Burned by the sun-through-glass
A rusted box on 4 wheels
Humps itself free
---welfare lunchmeat
dumpster puppies
Don’t play with those kids
Nothing but trouble
Dirty and broke
They got made wrong.
Hearing I
After Erica Hunt
You sit in a dimly lit courtroom facing Maat.
Her veiled face tilts downward at an oak
board with etchings that you can’t make out.
Shadows slither in the room, shuffling
into position but you can’t see them;
the spotlight is only on her and you.
Sterilized and scrubbed down crows
selected you to represent the human
race. Spontaneously plucked
from your grey-number-crunching cubicle,
a petal ripped off the wilting head
of one flower in a field of 700 trillion.
Delegated to convince Your Honor
that Earth is a fair and just place.
Silence loops through
the unseeable figures behind you
and you adjust your charcoal tie,
preparing to explain why the shoemaker’s
children have no shoes.