Poetry
Three Poems
HATTIE IN GREENWICH VILLAGE Why not sit quietly with them and trailYour smoke across the air as others do?For smoke is beautiful. Why such to-doWith scratching of your match? Your gestures fail,I say, to make your point. Those bred withinThese narrow stairs and crooked streets don't wearWith such éclat what your youth labelled sin.Your leering …
Shake the Dark Out
Underneath, there was an ancient musicI underestimated so you could be minus and postRomance in our soul of things trundling aroundOld truths but not believing. Luck-seeking,We pretended we were young, but we were onlyFreak-making love-taking strangersShining up our contemplations, building new homesProfoundly not our own. Alone, my trope, is thisLingering over your major promises in …
Electric Rococo Recollections of Jam Tree Gully from Afar
From the upper southeast windowthe cross on the church is stark—light-globes mark its outline, contrastthe twilit harbour. It wants moreout of symmetry than is on offer. Tomorrow, the Guru is going overto Jam Tree Gully to clear the guttersof dead, dry leaves. They congestwithout style, embellish with urge,the pragmatism of making a growthmedium: in summer …
Notes from Havana
1. Today the first rest in a long time: lolling on the bed in theAC, thinking of sitting & laughing at dinner on the Plaza Vieja withP & E their second night here, first lightning, then thunder,then rain—of P passed out after dinner another night & RA in theliving room teaching E to salsa, & …
Limpopo
What a croc. This riveris the crooked line betweenrand/dollar. Neither is ours.We cannot even afford our own money. This river has caughtthe national disease, hunger.This river playsthe national pastime, hunger, like a champion.This river wears ournational dress, hunger, like a string of hip-beads.This river teems withcrocodiles. We cannot afford to house them in a parkthese …
The stones in your garden
The stones in your garden speak louder than the people passing bythey claim an ancestry that goes back to the first cavewhen two flintstones controlled fireand a pauper wind swept the brambles of an alphabet gone deaf Things being what they wereyou had only to grasp a stone in your hand to feel the planet’s …
On Staying Behind
to the advice her cousins sent, the older girl cousins, married, girls who left our village with their husbands.than two weeks if she’s lucky. not have her stay with me to starve. She leaves with no wealth. I see the strength profe de los estados uniThis woman has never known hunger. I saw her shock when …
On Leaving
I have testedmyself against her speed, My cousins go with me this morning, their dark hair glossy, so youngtheir shoulders. Their moth remain, grayed village elders,wooden statues of saints i I wear only what I have. I carry a blouse one aunt gave me,a friend’s old sandals for days when heat …
The Dictator Declares War
He closes his eyes and spins his globe. His finger lands on water. He spins again. More water. The Enemy is in the ocean, he warns his citizens. His military ships fire torpedoes at nothing. Nothing fires back. The nation must fight something, his advisors tell him. So the dictator spins his globe until his …