i am descendant from women who greet death like brunch. /
i do not know if this is bravery or foolishness.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
OR WAS IT A METAPHOR?
The mouth is a hollow / for language. I know little of what shreds a child into two countries, but I think joy returns to the / flushed roof of my palate when my mouth tenders Igarra.
“a poem for Justin” and Two Poems
because you asked me your first word /
& i said i didn’t know /
& i could have told you a good lie /
& made that a small poem we share.
“Most of the Children Who Lived in This House Are Dead. As a Child I Lived Here. Therefore I Am Dead” and Three Poems
Next to the black upright piano was a window, which looked out at the blue pansies, which were also sometimes purple, or yellow, like the word contusion.
My body no longer
as if we could lay ourselves down at our own feet /
to mourn, as if we could shuck skin like a snake, slide away /
naked and new, some born-again eve.
in the room that it happens
in the room / i am prescribed / anger / unemployment / broken / back / doors / hooded
/ property / value / algorithmic // blackness
follow the moon
maybe i wake and feel the wind move through my body
/ but she reminds me what love lives in this skin, / says stay. says stay anyways.
