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Growing Mythology, or, To Turn a Frog into Something That Isn’t a Frog
Tuck islands in the lyric. Offer a watery spelling of light. / The disruption of stars in the blue-black oil // unearths a verb from its worm palace. Sing.
Two Poems from “What the Hollow Held”
People said "Sorry for your loss," suggesting / gone forever, suggesting never come back, / never get found, as in empty, as in without, / but it was something more / like transformation
The Painter
You sat with brushes in hand and the light flowing above and below, / the prayer like paper, the light illumined our sacred trees.
Map of Matter
Pacific reaches for the valley. / In side glances see-throughs / in fuchsia dawns and hell fire dusks / with a latent thrust of impudence: / outer space beckons to the sea trench.
A Basalt Princess
Pacific reaches for the valley. / In side glances see-throughs / in fuchsia dawns and hell fire dusks / with a latent thrust of impudence: / outer space beckons to the sea trench.
Where Nobody Is
Last weekend, a friend asked to go for a walk— / somewhere without people, she said / She doesn’t want to see people: / hiking trails are packed, / so I suggest our town’s cemetery.
The Gasconade
We make Southern Missouri by dusk, / arrive at your river, park, & walk / along your shy, thin corpse. / I come to you by firefly tonight / to do what children do with mothers
Real Change
My cousin told me he found / Jesus, which was the easy part / since he couldn’t find his way / out of Brooklyn. Then this morning / it was so quiet you could hear / a cat walking. By noon the wind / kicked in making the trees swing / like Count Basie and the traffic / sounded like his horn section.
Ode to Grief Bacon
Weeks after the pills folded/ my grief like an omelet, / I opened a cookbook to taste
Coming Full Circle
Imagine the magic a circle holds, its infinite points—dotted or passing through. Imagine my Tagalog and accent erased, so that I could pass.
From the Collected Poems of Kermit the Frog
Once there were stars, / strings to dangle them, / an unseen hand disappearing / into the moon’s waxing / ass. It’s all hanged,
To be a man
don’t sob at the sight of your grandfather’s ashes stored in a mausoleum for war veterans and husks of grandfathers that once loved but have since formed their hands into oysters.
Ghazal for the Cast Iron
Because I haven’t taken the bristle pad’s sudsy scraping grace to scour this pan as I do all others, erasing the grease