Poetry
A Mother Near the West Virginia Line Considers Public Health
The industry thinks I’m too dumb to back down; they don’t knowI do this for my mom and dad. They were 69 and 71. He had pulmonary fibrosis, worked with asbestos all his life. She grew upnear the coke ovens back when kids were sent into the mines to pick coal. So they both had …
Poem against Selfies
But I have so much to say! For instance, did you realizethat insects are the most diverse group of organismson the entire planet, representing approximately80% of the world’s species?That at any given timethere are an estimated 10 quintillion(10,000,000,000,000,000,000)individual insects alive,that the number of (living and dead) species of insectsis said to be, at a minimum,30 …
Origin
That evening, while the pasta boiled,the man said to the woman “Let them be white . . .” And as though the earthrumbled and shook—or rather grew from inside a slate of nothing,three gold-skinned balls spun into the air and broke open: many years later,when my arms and legs turned solid and …
High Heaven
for Rosalee He who loves gives a hostage to fortune.] –Friedrich Nietzsche Another stinking diaper to thankGod for, why we traveled all the way to Bethlehem,Alabama, to get this,slept in a crummy motel for a month waitingfor her to be born, mud-wrestled every bureaucratin the state, pressing inky fingers on every pieceof paper they …
Carmen
after Catullus Late snow today, and flower bulbsare already sending their fat shoots upthrough wet mulch along the sidewalk.Sparrows flit through the bushes,taunting me with their song of spring.I imagine how one would fit so perfectlyin the palm of my hand, how warmit would be. I’m tempted to believethe lies these birds sing, but I …
My New Friend
In a photograph, her father’s capis jaunty, his beard wild. A hooded falcon poses on his outstretched handand he is everything you want your father to be. My new friend doesn’t wear makeup.Her feet are tiny, tattooed. She’s broke, but spent a whole summer drivingthe craggy roads of Iceland. She says that in Reykjavík, they …
The way I always pictured ritual sacrifices
I wondered which would give in first,the old man carrying his fern or the ferncarried to the street the way I alwayspictured ritual sacrifices. Knees bent,he hunched above the curb long enoughfor the patience of gods to wear thin,taking in the uncertain abyss backing upthe storm drain and flooding the streetinches thick with muck. It …
Because you forgot me, I am weird in the world
Already I’ve changed—wallflower, paper flower,hidden and pressed. My mouth a thin-slotteddoor, an opening in the brush. Find the spoton my neck where the evil eye can leer unhindered. The forest crowds around meto stare, blank-eyed, free of conscience,those eyes see what I’ve become: a bride’snarrow fingers, my hair a bereft knot looking for solace. I …
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 …