Excerpts
Trade Matters
for a slave to snore in sleepingis counted a very great fault indeed no-one buys an adult slave (domestic—wild from inland is a different matter) the worst is the treacherous weatherthe tedium, the wearisome monotony Note: from Ternate,
View of Toledo
after El Greco Beacons on the skyscrapers hovered,The river’s black mirror jeweled with their lights. Watch as the exotic crosses loomed into viewOn top of the Byzantine church. The sign for Homestead floated overhead,And then a sky as wide as the river valley Working in the darkness in a world of flame,Ladles the Dippers above …
Tangled
Call My Name
When I was seven, my sea captain father at sea, my mother a strobing lighthouse of missing, I stood alone in my bedroom, renaming all my toys Melissa. You, and you, and you. A child’s narcissism, maybe. A punishment for my dolls. I didn’t choose my name, but I could choose to give it away. …
Review: Afaa Michael Weaver. The Government of Nature. University of Pittsburgh Press.
At the end of his poem ‘‘The Impossible,’’ a poem that unflinchingly recounts a memory of sexual abuse, Bruce Weigl writes, ‘‘Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what.’’ I’ve always had a contentious relationship with this line—feeling both its truth and its impossibility at the same time, and, of course, that’s …
Árida Zona
Too tall. That’s what the teacher with the green eyes, the one from the boy’s side, says. She’s too tall to play Mary. Joseph is only just a little thing. She could be a shepherd or the innkeeper’s wife, but the teacher says no. She is too big for the sheep costumes, and they can’t …
Peonies
Now that the garden has been bulldozedby local managers, the jasmine has been put to the ground for now, lest the man in Burgstrasse 19 admirethe scent he feels coming throughthe clear window across the seas. Done with gardenia, I toyed awhile with black-eyed susan (even drank it dry in Kentucky), so that every other yearall would appear to come …
I Was in the Commons Kissing, and Lucy Next to Me Kissing, Too
Both of us under one boy or another.That’s how we spent our senior year,Beacon Hill, Harvard Square,Coolidge Corner, anywherebut Belmont, or Westwood Center. Boylston Street for bongs—Reefer Madness, incense, Yardley’s makeovers,buffalo leather toe sandals—her baby was bornwith encephalocele. While I held her,I hoped she’d die, though tried to love her,four months, she didn’t grow—Lucy rocking her,cooing, passers-by …
Dear Black Barbie
I made you fuck my white Barbie even though I knew you didn’t want to. There were no whips or chains,this was a different kind of plantation fantasy. I didn’t have a Ken doll, so I made you the man. Not knowing what fucking looked like I just rubbed you against each other and made you kiss. I kept you …