I wake up sweating. My nostrils are raw and peeling skin. I cough to catch my breath. I have no fever, no flu. I keep losing things. Last night it was my twelve-year-old daughter in a cornfield. We rode in …
Poetry
My Brother Calls
to let me know Sonic
is including gravy
in their chicken strips dinner again.
He asks when I’m coming home
for Thanksgiving. We don’t
speak often. Having not been raised
in the same house, little has passed
between us— no …
The Hostages
It was you or your house that dead-ended the road
and fitted my living in until I could nothing
but survive amidst the furniture, the clothes
the drawers closed in that blocked my body
from the vicious in you, from …
If You Leave the House Today I’ll Be Alone With My Panic
I can imagine the horses grazing
by the shed in the pasture opposite our house
—the off-limits grounds guarded by a fence
we could easily hop and signs advising us
not to. If you leave the house today
I’ll be …
Behind Beauty
There’s a little purple space cadet,
folding a cease & desist into a fortuneteller.
She isn’t worried about the asteroid lightyears away
or the screaming crew she forgot to release
from timeout. According to her calculations,
she’s got nothing to …
The Rainy Season
raises up animals from their water houses:
birds like wet laundry, alligators close enough to appear
long-lashed and serene, Florida chicken turtle
bundled in the apartment parking lot
as though delivered by drone.
i’m just a black goddess & ryne/river/god
i’m just a black goddess
I can fantasize
about a married man
holding me, breathing in
the scent of a new, shared morning
that suffocates the fragmented
perfume from last night still
asleep on my neck,
and the soft of …
[IT IS JUST BEFORE THE WAR CRACKS THE LAND OPEN LIKE AN EGG]
—For Feiga Maler, 1919-1942, who died in the Kraków Ghetto
It is just before the war cracks the land open like an egg.
Her mother’s voice—rooted in the naked grief …
Dad’s Bathrobe
for summer blue and white seersucker
my sister froze when she saw me in it
I took it when he died and I’ve washed it
because of how he liked to beat us
a thousand times it’s ankle-length …
Are You Single?
for Michael Donald and his family
Released and returned, the hostages invaded
each and every news segment. The new president,
a former actor (Damon told her. Denise had never
heard of The Killers or Law and Order.) …
