Poetry
Box of Stars
for Sara I hate when the gods leave us.Field of wind, field of wine: a headacheis a loneliness in which to lie down.So one enters sleep every night, a little softer,walks softly over graves. The brightnessin the sky neither the color of rust nor moth.Lucid because we do not yet understand.Though we imagine its …
Cold
It was so cold,the war had frozen over. I could see my breath in the classroom,fluffy like cotton yarn,and my teacher’s,and my high school colleagues’. At home, I’d place my handsover the reading lampto turn them from blueto red. Mom bought fabrics, lining, batting, and snapsand made my brother and me ski costumesto wear to …
Lip Liner to Hillary
I’m worried sick you’ll ditch me. Rumor isSarah Palin’s lips always look plumpbecause her liner’s tattooed, counterfeit.She wakes up with zigzag hair, bad breath, a grump,and fuchsia-outlined lips ready for prom.I hear her trick saved time at campaign stops;unlike your fifteen-minute drill—lip balm,lip primer, me, lipstick, gloss, cotton swabsto even my line—she was done in …
Elegy in Which I Am Awake
I thought it would be another door opened in the body,opened on a street where there is music, anda little rain or snow falling, the sound of someone shoutingin the rain, and the new warmthof bare feet in streetlight, blue field at duskand you …
When I Am Told to “Buck Up” to “Fight the Good Fight” to “Pull Up My Boot Straps & Build Bridges” But I Am Not Ready But I Know Damn Well I Should Be Ready So I Try:
Whoever despises the clitoris despises the penisWhoever despises the penis despises the cuntWhoever despises the cunt despises the life of the child.– Muriel Rukeyser America, fuck you. Let me be specific: My mother’s white America, fuck you. & fuck me, too, because I didn’t makea warrior of myself & disruptmy mother’s comfort by reminding her …
Crossing Borders
When we leave our homes,someone has set them on firethough our eyes are trained to seethis no longer. Instead, this house, we say, is filled with yellow daisies,and its backyard houses the acacia treemother planted years ago. We are given new names, newsounds for our sorrows. We aretold new stories that somehowstill do not belong …
The Great American Novel
Is it conceivable that you could write a novel in which blacks arenot center stage?Bill Moyers to Toni Morrison, March 1990 Imagine you are a boy in the Midwest with a slingshot in your pocket.Your dad’s under the Chevy, and oil like blood slides across sleek cementto stain your white sneakers. Then you’re thirty. Built …
Asteroid Recovery
At the moment of impact, my brother said he felt nothing, he felt himself to be nothing, a curl of smoke from some extinguishment, the last of the species of himself, caught in the very moment of extinction. The cupboards of his clapboard chest shook enough to shatter their earthenware to the floor, and then …
Who will die tonight?
Who will die tonight?Tonightwe hear the voices of machine gunsnot death's footstepsWho guides the bullet to choose who dies?The one who fires the gun?The bullet?Death itself?The one who dies?Or you, hiding we don't know where,or you, who we call by name?Who will rest among us?The sniper?The bullet?The one who stays behind to count the deador …