Poetry
Miss Saigon
My mother was Miss Saigon of 1973, two years before the fall and capture of the city by the People’s Army of Vietnam and the Viêt Công. There is a solid silver trophy, its height the length of my torso. The cup itself is the circumference of a basketball, and its S-shaped handles are molded …
Comptrollers
Morning after the twentieth anniversary of environemental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa's murder Did you just say why do the heathens rage? My head is a woven reed of traffic lawsbut my legs on the pedals seem to be sayingtoday is not the day. Perched as I am on this wheel, slantingthrough the streets like a swift …
Crush
Why do they call it ‘‘crush’’?The man strapped in horizontal on the hydraulic lift, then tipped vertical,bellowing, I am standing up. The nurses trying to cantileverhim into the bathroom so he can brush his teeth.Greg described my dad’s menu as ‘‘mechanically softened.’’They actually take the entire rib-eye steak, or chicken parmigiana,and put it through a …
Bees, Honeycombs, Honey
Bees, thousands and thousands,surviving in a hiveunder the soffit; bees,honeycombs, and honey,and dampness, and old woodsticky in the sunlight; and the beekeeper’s hand,carefully, and slowly,vacuuming, and taking;the bees tumbling, gently,into the makeshift hive;honeybees, and honeycombs, and honey, glistening;honey, the only foodthat will not spoil; honey,pulled from the pyramids,still sticky, and sweet,thousands of years later; I …
Garter, Copper, Water
He’s my age, and for once in Wise, VirginiaI believe it: same confused complexion(baby pimples nose and chin,around the eyes first fine contrails scratchingvacant sky), same dislike to sitwhile others stand. Same no gold band.He’s clean: I like the way he preened todaybefore clinic, though he circles usmost warm days in oily T-shirts, mowingour field, …
In the Name of the Tongue
Come Sunday afternoon and I sat back hunchedin the car, thumbing my father’s Bible, the door slamming behind him, as though his gun had burst a nest of birds.I fingered the grime into my hair and sat rehearsing, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witnessThou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, my …
Consume
La poesía es como el pan, de todosRoque Dalton What Satsuma mandarins for Santo Niño, for my father’s sepia portrait and Our Lady of Grace, what altar’s dinuguan and steaming brown rice, rice rotting for vermin, cockroach crony sycophants to sate themselves, TV What bone broth elixir in Mason jars, what Whole Foods 100% raw organic …
Sunday: A Travelogue
The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish. – Terence McKenna Sunday morning. Late to wake, again. Again in a panic. Again, I startle to find a full-grown man …
Brink
I work small bones from the back of my mouthto my front teeth, pluck and drop themin a pile on a plastic plate. How easy it could be to golike this: cross-legged on the kitchen stool,mackerel flash-fried only a moment ago,an untongued bone fixed and final in my throat. After shattering a bottle of Shalimar …