Poetry
Horror Story
My niece’s classmate kept a pet snake coiled next to her in bed. One night, the girl found the snake stretched out straight along her side. She thought it was sick and took it to a vet who said, “It’s not ill. It’s trying to measure when it’s long enough to …
Urine on the Evening News
Of course It stinks Why do you think They always advertise Clorox & Tide & Ivory Snow & Joy & Cosmic Drain Cleaner & Vacation Cruises & IVs On even more channels If they didn’t You’d have to smell the wars You don’t believe in anyway Or listen to that endless hypnotic voice fill The …
Farm Notes
Afternoon brings early ice. Took the stock trailer to Gilpin’s new auctioneer. Old man Gilpin’s down with gout, done with livestock. Cut out a few head to get through the winter. Stopped for gas at Bo’s. Shelby walked in with Maria on his arm. She set our boy on the counter while she fished through …
Drinking Senegalese Tea with Mint after a Visit to the Slave House of Gorée Island
(May 24, 2012, Dakar, Senegal, West Africa) for Idrissa Diakhaté This is what I said I wouldn’t do: let a West African man court me. Attempt to make him comprehend my confusion of languages and flavors: I am not a mulatto. I am the daughter of two Black Americans— who both are the children of …
Aurora Borealis
Before all this, there was the cabin, its basket of potatoes and jar of milk, its white enamel sink and heirloom Austrian rug we fell asleep on after midnight runs, curling with heat and thoughts of each other stretching like a road to either horizon, heater blasting, ploughing through the soundless white, the blurring lines …
Mediterranean
I A bright red boat Yellow capsicums Blue fishing nets Ochre fort walls II Sahar’s silk blouse gold and sheer Her dark black kohl-lined lashes II A street child’s brown fists holding the rainbow in his small grasp IV My lost memory white and frozen now melts color ready to refract
How to recognize a werewolf
The old verses suggest a cannibal; a man who can tell you you taste like pig. Here is the meaning in the myth: A real werewolf howls not to the moon but for the moon. He will say she is silver. Leviathan in the night window. So bright all he can see are stains in …
The Sun Sleeps in Your Womb
The orchard of uncertainty that we planted yields its fruit by night, when the sun sleeps in your womb awaiting my seed. We know nothing of the minerals and the buried toys, nor of the bumblebees that carry pollen between two warring states. The earth smells of forgotten damp and the footprints of our childhood …
Migration
Last night and for some days preceding a holy migration: of praying mantises, earthworms, and a single black salamander with yellow spots, the slick shiny black wet body of him moved slowly just outside my front door, gentle, on the mat that says ‘‘Welcome.’’ I am thinking now of your ability to survive—somehow, amid fire, …