Poetry

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. Read more.

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”? Read more.

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. Read more.

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. Read more.

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. Read more.

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. Read more.

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 Read more.

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. Read more.

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 Read more.

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. Read more.

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, Read more.

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. Read more.

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. Read more.

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. Read more.

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. Read more.

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. Read more.

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” Read more.

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 Read more.

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. Read more.

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. Read more.

In the woods behind her house,
in a season where the world tilts most
from its ball of light,
upon her small part of Earth’s
rounded back —
naked oak branches covered in white: Read more.

Sister Mary Rose (so young she could’ve been your actual sister)
marched you and her other seventy-two second-grade students
(no teacher aides, no volunteer parents, just the good nun)
eleven blocks west toward the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge
to the palatial Hobart Theater Read more.

Whatever anyone
tells you know
it is possible
common in fact
to exist
in one place in
another two time
transience one
location contains
many dancing Read more.

You’d think 2AM conversations would be nonsensical and funny,
not rational and sober avenues to despair. Round and round
and round we go, down the looped rabbit hole all new methods,
medicines, discoveries have to go to become less… detrimental. Read more.