I want you to know I honor
each of you, how your shadows
fully cross our streets

just after dawn, how you
never bend to ridicule,
or to rain, how you never lower

your standards, or your arms.

This boy that I loved, my first love, named parts of me
Names full of admiration
Names that never addressed me
Foreign names of white women

Aurora
I don’t like those names

migrants call, no formality of naming, their ox or mule pulled wagons
“schooners”
little more than buckboards with front plank bench
hand-pulled brake no suspension
wood wheels wood spokes rusting iron rims
sun shield metal-ribbed white canvas hoods
ceaseless wind shakes

I remember being thirteen
And the snow falling so completely
On the windshield.

It was as if I were alone.
So sudden and delicate.
A single open window in which the cold light expands.

Crickets signal the need for sacrifice,
a thanks for good harvest,
appeasement for the war gods of winter.
The frost is overdue.
Near the end of October,
the mosquitoes hum and bite
as I still sit on the front porch.

The world is a savage place.
Have you read the news today?
Surveyed rural highways,
An elegy to wildlife speared by cars like arrows from the crossbow?
Felt life fade from the one clutched in your arms?
Seen a man sink to his knees as you whisper
“She’s gone”?

I loved you since I was a small child. We all did. You went to my aunt first.
Then me. Initially there was a little jealousy. My aunt lavishly gave out other
heirlooms to compensate. My grandfather created a special built-in place ~ a cut
out in the dining room wall. You fit there perfectly.

The old canoe rests on the sand
at lake’s edge, its stern still
in the water. How many

strokes of the paddle wore away
the varnish on the gunwales?
Many. So many. And years

of sunlight and rain. Years
of snow and wind.

You sing songs to the pug in your fake Cantonese
and seem surprised when he doesn’t understand. You make coffee
a party: dark-roasted beans, gleaming French presses, and hand-thrown
mugs plucked from thrift-store shelves.

1. Here I am
His creased dress-pants hang on bony anatomy:
pelvic brim, iliac crest. Long foreleg ankles without socks.
I don’t know why a Nuer, reputed to walk for days without rest,
measuring the horizon with metronomic femurs and tibia
reminds me of my adolescent father, but he does.

Valley of the living
Valley of the dead
You call me back to my roots
Here, I can pause & look
I see
I see my people
I see me
Who am I?
I am a part of Gwembe

There will be no words,
no tributes, sonnets or verses of consolation,
borrowed from the great poets or philosophers
for an angel called up too soon.
Only the cries of infinite mourning rambles will reach the heavens.

She drowns on the sofa for two weeks. But each day she makes herself rise and wobble to the kitchen for water, a bite of toast. The blistering pain in her pneumonia-filled lungs causes her to grab the counter as if it’s an overturned boat, yet she hangs on, gasping for dear life.

اماذا أر تديي الحجاب

The clouds are filled with rain
but they do not bring rain
just like a woman
sometimes
does not bring any current
so, look again

It’s late, and I’m doing the last dishes
of the day. I rinse them, swing the door down,
pull out the lower rack, and then
I sigh. Every time.

Someone designed this machine with a lot of thought.
There is a right way to load it.

Once she’d been busy,
unapproachable,
hard to get in touch with,
too cool for the likes of me.

Now she’s here to stay,
not leaving me for a second,

I’m not going to be famous,
but my kids might remember me.

Perhaps I’ll have the luck
to kiss a child and be forgotten,
a lingering creation left upon the earth,
consumed by a mad dash to replace us all.

Tell your kids that love is essential
but do not love yourself.
Keep a spider inside your shoulder.
Let it tuck itself there
as it protects a lead ball
residing in your stomach.

and, just back from the Farmer’s Market, the last of the year, I’m wearing a summer sweatshirt the amber and aubergine of falling leaves. The cats mill expectantly, for what I know not.

1. Saturdays in their kitchen,
my mother watering her cactus, my father
pulling out mozzarella and bread I have lost joy for.
The drowsy sadness on my father’s face whenever I didn’t want one.
Changing my mind was the gift. The day moved on sweeter.

Evil whispers echo through the space behind my eyes
penetrating to the core, they absorb my last drops of youthful exuberance
“it’s safe here, no need for change”

You taught me how to say and spell my name
On an old wooden dresser at our farm house
You pointed to herbs in the garden, parsley and oregano
We put on old dresses and Dad’s ties

Do your eyes discern my halo? The world at large seems blind.
Affluent obsess on phones, poor scramble to survive.
One group calculates its commerce, one simply stays alive.

Somewhere beyond the order of the sun
I would crouch sullen in the steppe wolf’s lair,
Gather the darkness into bloodlit eyes,
Tune raw sinews to a pitch of rage,
Howl incessant fury to the sky.