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The Wounded Stork
The dead bird on the front-door step was a barn swallow. Makhosi recognized the copper face and glossy blue hood that continued towards a forked tail. Its clawed feet were tucked together, as if it had been arranged there.
A Puerto Rican Bathroom
Last St. Patrick’s Day I was groped / on the sidewalk outside Tin Roof. / Too much Jameson was how we got there, / waiting for an Uber / that would never show.
Re: I HAVE DECIDED ABOUT POETRY
Red graffiti says I HAVE DECIDED ABOUT POETRY & it’s like, what did they decide / exactly, that poetry’s so great they left their family moved to the mountains / lived in a little tent in the middle of nowhere writing haikus 24/7? Or did they decide / poetry’s so not worth it
Thursday
Nearly 21,000 kids are simply unaccounted for in Gaza. They lie under their homes’ stones. / In Idaho, a dry breeze drifts from the sycamore across my windowsills past the lilacs. / I toast sourdough and spread blue cheese dressing, lay down green leaf lettuce, / overlap tomato slices and pile on oven-crisped bacon, feel it crunch under the top bread.
Union Pacific
Behind my house are the railroad tracks where Cassidy Jackson found the pair of legs. They were cut just below the knees, but it wasn’t a clean cut; they were crushed, and the bones looked like an Otter Pop had been smashed by a hammer.
Three Poems
If we are lucky, we get old / and sit a while in God’s waiting room, / dance at cafes, admire / Baroque architecture, embody
the environment.
Aidez-moi, ma chère amie! Or, Corday Awaits Apprehension
Iteration on the scene of Jean Paul Marat's death, famously depicted by Jaque Louis David. David's portrayal is mournful and sympathetic, and has created a sense of Marat as an heroic victim, whereas, to my reading, he was a much more ambivalent character, and probably a villain, as he was seen by Charlotte Corday, who assassinated him in order to bring a stop to his vicious publication and influence, through which he instigated murder and violence and sectarianism.
Two Poems
Alas for the prisoners of masculinity / who would not be caught dead holding / a man’s hand on the boardwalk between / South Pointe Drive and First Street, / where even hetero couples get swept / out to sea, crushed under condos or / washed up on the beach to be eaten / by realtors. What do you want, nothing / is perfect. (But it might be survivable.)
Lazy Aging
Seemed a ponderous passing of days / since meadows waved flaxen arms, / and a silver brook backed up / to form a beaver pond.
Three Poems
A decade ago, I would have told you I'd have children by now. It was never a question, only an inevitability. I longed for love and marriage, for stability, for vows and promises. Motherhood would have been the happy byproduct of my dreams come true. I would have gladly consigned myself to that fate had my future manifested in the ways I desired it to. But wanting a thing only drove it further from my grasp.
If asked, then lie
For six years I kept you safe from it all; / sharp countertops. The toxic lake algae. The toxic grass. / I shut all the windows so the toxic air wouldn’t get in. / I checked your fever with a thin thermometer. / I uncanned soup and paced the linoleum.
I told you to be silent in the attic.
Impermanence.
Her name escapes me now, but her face was unforgettable. The woman—I will call her Sarah—had half-inch fake eyelashes, sparkly pink lips, and her forehead, cheeks, and chin were plumped and plastered unnaturally smooth across the broad bones of her face.