Poetry
Creation Myth
Overgrown weeds had hidden the car untilthe brushfire revealed it. Once the doors cooled,neighborhood kids came to investigate. One rubbeda circle clear with his sleeve and clicked his glassesagainst the window. A beautiful woman layagainst the seat—black dress, sparklesaround her neck, confetti in her hair.Next to her sat a man in a tuxedo,a noisemaker stuck …
Time in the Sierras Subbéticas
All week a caretaker started hacking the hillside with his weed whacker at dawn. Its fierce buzz drove us, bleary with olive pollen and summer heat, out to walk through groves and whitewashed village homes as the sun rose. On the foothills road we stepped aside for a baker’s pickup, its load of fresh loaves …
stop-&-frisk
-&-what- does-it-take- to-cooperate- -shrink- into-an-apology -turn-over- your-body -turn-out- your-pockets -be-a-right-answer- to-questions -they-choose -be- chosen
Husband Fair
for Matthew, darling How good to lay with my husband in our stone flat with not enough windows and many doors. We need another chair. The smaller table wobbles too much for books and won’t hold both of our plates. But we eat, he and I, and the fare is good. I do the …
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 …