I Was Raised by an Octopus
Not in the National Geographic sense of a greasy floating thing squiggling around in water that you never wanted to get too close to or stab on your plate with a knife, but definitely a many-tentacled being that could rip your skin off in sheets if you tried to sneak out a window, and a ponderous head swiveling around like… Read more →
Holes in the Pines as Passage
Untouching
The room could do nothing but remain inside the girl. Here, objects lived resembling sculptures— maybe from another culture that grew extinct on an island floating in an ocean or time before you knew you were looking at them. You could tell, passing the windows, that something was formed inside. Or secreted. The objects returned your gaze, or seemed in… Read more →
Field Poems from Mars on Earth
Mount Teide on the Canary Island of Tenerife is the highest peak in Spain, at 12,188 feet. And the third largest volcano in the world. It is considered active but hasn’t blown since 1909. There is an otherworldly element to it. NASA worked with Spanish aerospace experts on Teide to build a prototype for the data-gathering robot called Perseverance that… Read more →
The Thing About Re-Entry
One and one-half degrees ago, I sought supplementary employment to fund death-wish extracurriculars You’ll get bored said the manager over the phone Overqualified Despite white-hot yearning for endangering my life, I like a brown goldfish in a plastic bowl too aware of its spherical condition, could not contain the exponential need to expand into myself, then outward for too long…. Read more →
Kaleidoscope
The rain stopped, then started again. Nearly indiscernible. From here, with every turn of my head, a mountain ascends. On the street, pigeons strum with emerald, incandescent wings, domesticated to deliver our messages then starved. My sister keeps calling from her kaleidoscope, asking if I can see the colors morph into stars, triangles, diamond maps for her delusion. If you just… Read more →
Ryan tells me a taillight is out.
1. when crime is embroidered on your skin at birth one must take precaution: say ‘I love you’ each time you step out because stepping in again isn’t a basic human right. shame, shame sometimes simple fixes cost more than one Black man’s life – the mechanics of this baffle… still 2. my uncle pulled into the driveway strobing red… Read more →
Balancing Act
Rough. This carpet isn’t mine and I know it through my palms. There’s nothing subtle about my ankles popping. I love so many. I can feel my oily, red heart. My clammy, cold skin roughing up an organ’s edge. Sometimes it’s not that I’m too weak to hold. It’s the holding itself that’s questionable. Reposition. It doesn’t make sense. Why… Read more →
Suddenly
A child returning on her dad’s bike kept staring at me until I got lost in the ascending distance between us. It was another normal walk home. What was that she searched on my body. Did I startle her the way sidewalk giving way to the wilderness startled me a few moments ago. The shallow land covered by shrubs bowed… Read more →