Poetry
Lot’s Fall
I’ve kissed a black stone in the snow. Perhaps it was a black eye in the stone’s dream in the snow. Like a spot on the white tablet. I’ve kissed a black eye in the stone’s dream in the snow. Oblivion is yours, yours alone! No I didn’t turn back and there turned all that …
Posing Nude
after Living Room by Deana Lawson If I were to choose a man to pose nudewith, it would be the ex whose handin mine, I couldn’t distinguishfrom my own—just as, studyingthis photograph, it’s hard to tellthe male’s fingers, pressedinto a triangle, from the female’s,decorated by acrylic nails so longthey curve like a penis might. This …
This Is the Dream
In the sun, brown men glowas I hear the clop of their hammers;they nail new siding to a building, stapletar paper to a roof, whack weeds off the edge of a yard. Always these men of soiland gasoline bring me to my father,a different brown but brown. I picturehim standing with his friend like these …
Miniatures
My nightmares about betrayal have all come true, if possible, I would like to understand the nature of your room, I wish to place something inside the wardrobe closet. A small gift, as small as a jam jar of poison, as small as a loaded makeshift pistol that a toddler once used as a toy and resulted in many …
Shunting from Dakar to Casamance
I A father takes it as his job to order:rank the powers in the house so the man o’ yard could slicethe crotons with the cutlass how he gauged it, but couldn’t dark hiskhaki-wearing self onto the porch; there, the woman who did pressingeased a drink to sun from shelter through the grillwork’s diamond gaps,sumptuous …
The B-Movie Apocalypses All Failed
When the dead awoke in their gravesthey were too weak to dig their way out,and even the ones not yet buriedwere awfully tired. Meanwhilethe giant spiders struggledto contend with gravity, their organstoo heavy now to function, and anywaythey were not well adaptedto drink larger prey. Their starvationleft a lot of cleanup; sanitation workersdemanded better benefits. …
LOVE SONG OF THE GALáPAGOS TORTOISE
I am Lonesome George, the last Galápagos Tortoise of Pinta Island.I see Darwin’s hairy face on T-shirts and hats, backpacks and mugs.I see the statues. I can read the history books if someone turns the pages. I remember Darwin. I was there the day he landed in the ship namedfor a dog with floppy ears. …
Negative Compliment or Contemplations on Racist Rhetoric
You don’t see the back of your own wordsthe ones grazing my face, the almost humin summon on your tongue, to dig a hole& place me in, just so my brown body makessense to you, to lower in your vision, your scoopas to think my bones for collection, for descentas in a placement that you …
A tipsy walk, the walk we took
A tipsy walk, the walk we tookNathaniel Mackey, ‘‘Double Staccato’’ When auntie-mommy walks out of the bathroom, she uses one hand and arm to hold her breasts, and the free hand to cover her poonani. She runs across the room snickering and giggling at herself, her hips shuffling from side to side. When you come …