Obediently, the baby
opens her mouth
to the spoon.

She has watched the adults
opening their mouths
around the table for so long,

When Carlito’s son suffocated to death in the back seat of his father’s brand-new Mercedes SUV, Caridad García felt all her suspicions had been confirmed. Maybe her son’s sudden fame and fortune were not a blessing but a curse. Everything had happened so quickly since the release of Carlito’s single “Love a la Cubana,” a song sung in English to a salsa beat.

Dear Paul,
When your hospice nurse called, I was drumming my fingers in a parking space at a Bixby’s drive-thru, aching for the large, 550-calorie caramel cappuccino I ordered online. Anything to get me through Mom’s 4:00 cocktail hour.

Listen to the wind, its
strings and strains of
language and song
pulling you to your feet;
a ragdoll animated and living.

Osuke felt a twinge of unease as he strode across the scarlet carpet toward the host in the velvet robe with glimmers of silver. Megumi looked glad to see the young man and pleased that he had picked out an elegant dark suit for this occasion.

I’m not allowed to go to Grandma’s hospital room because I’m only twelve years old, and the hospital regulations say I need to be at least thirteen or accompanied by an adult.

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White
Hurricane
Chicago Ice

Los Angeles to Santa Barbara

To my parents’ dismay, I took full advantage of New York City’s disco era in the late 1970s till the mid-80s. I did go to NYU undergraduate, but if someone asks, “What was your major?” I answer “Night Life.”

Athletic vitality invites gym walls of vivid colors, players spilling onto courts with crimson tones fitting coming contests yet pale walls circumscribe this setting, matching well-worn olive sweatshirts, khaki pants and lemon tees as men of subdued spirit shuffle in beneath torn net strands, symbols of their fall.

I was walking the trails through the oak forest on our property, looking for the pair of pileated woodpeckers I could hear furiously pounding their heads against a tree trunk. My phone rang with a similar rhythmic urgency in my pocket, as though in conversation with the woodpeckers.

She disappears
takes with her
something created together
I move forward to where she stood
the absence of her presence
leaves behind a vacuum

The possible face stares back at me
from across the weedy, ragged backyard,
its dark grey oval rising from the darker
striated bark of the sweetgum.

In the galaxies pooling in the waiting room
where black holes hum the prelude
to creation
we chart the shushed diagnosis
embossed in the orbit of
the body’s forgotten comets.

My mother’s white handkerchief
lies on my hand, the corners
embroidered with small flowers,
pink, blue, white. I unfold it
and find the yellow feather,
where I put it eighty years ago.

Marching men in uniforms, crisp
Navy-blue shoulders, starchy stiff
Polyester and pins
Bagpipes gasp and gather
The strength to carry the day

Something was different when Danny closed the wooden picket gate behind him at Aunt June’s. The first thing he noticed was an odd smell, something mixed in with the pines along the path.

3.2.2_
Hi. My name = Aioli McCoy. And, first things first, I think this is stupid. And by this, I mean you. Diary. Journal. Thingamajig. Honestly? I’m only writing to make Pauleen (wife) happy. Due to, earlier, when I came home from work, she sat me down, put on serious face like she had big news to share, then handed me this black moleskin.

The water level rose to the floor of their hut despite it being a few feet off the ground. Nimuel rushed around their home, gathering everything he could carry while Ligaya got herself and their newborn together. She moved slowly, still sore from giving birth only hours before.

Cherry Blossom Forest

Epicurus the Greek philosopher
tells me not to fear death.
He goes, Why should you fear death?
If you are, then death is not.

Six-year-old Craig insisted on wearing his t-ball jersey, a too-large purple pullover that advertised Mim’s Pharmacy out front and sported the number 8 on its back.

Once, in another time, I traveled with my parents
In the 1951 Ford sedan to a distant part of the city.
You could call it a city, but everyone then
Referred to it only as a town.

Miss Donna’s laugh has the unconscious sincerity that makes your throat catch and your stomach sink, like she’s just confessed something deeply personal. I picture her as a robust lady with broad shoulders and strong workers’ arms.