Eastpoint
Perched on the bowone of the zinc-faced men spittingthrough vacant teeth, tweezing shellfishoff the bottom, now clerking at Dollar General.Oysters gone with a fresh wind, shells crushed driveways.Mullet still flip, avoid the hook. Storms from the futurethreaten small skinned houses, twisting curtains,banging those back doors off their hinges.No more lines of women fronting deep sinks,knives twitching, slime gauzing freckled forearms.Investors… Read more →
The Trouble with Punctuation
This morning, cloisonné clouds turnthe wings of gulls into lyricalpatterns against the sky—a meditation in pinks and apricots they spiral above and around me,unreachable, then follow me downthe street to my emptied house. I pass other people’s children hop-scotchingwildly, freely—with unstable movementsthey teeter toward the safety of home square. From the long shadow of a statue over-looking city hall, their… Read more →
Vanilla
Let loose, the comet trails darkness,scratchy bright silencebirth canal to IV tubes,preserving the smell. You tolerate the tasteof missing tonsils, floating insidean otherwise piffled universefull of sloshing stars. A few raw hours lateryou’re the grounded pigeon, headstretching to make the ice creamgo down slowly.
You Heartfelt Stab of Glee / O!
see me sliding into this metal tube / head first this zing this friction / means a smell of iodine / means my theta signals / a subterranean chasm within your fluid swirl / where each tiny cell wells up / binding me to your microscopic galaxy / your weekend / a rare sun pouring through trees & a green… Read more →
wintermelon soup
i am plucking seed & skin from my teeth while she stirs, boiling strands of melon flesh you see, i don’t believe my pohpoh knows when to ladle the simmering fat because the pot overflows and still she hums a song about how she was inside the belly of a mare in a past life, as if she was the… Read more →
Shards of Air
Take the mountain chains where the golden plover hasarrived, run your fingers down the grassy green slopes.The shore near the river is green too. Somehow last year’sleaves still hang on in the cracks and crevices; theytremble, they’re awestruck and terrified as the riverchurns. But here in the city, pressed against a wall, allyour features blur and yet somehow the serene… Read more →
Self-Portrait in Church
You sing these hymnals to escape and yet,they still cut your mouth, a prayer bursting your palms open, communion soon,just words across more bruised mouths, fragile wicks unlearning the flameof these psalms and purging lungs of this decaying light: listen, at the altar,your own dry bones and the husk of a shadow sing.
Regardless of Disaster
Seconds caught themselves in the burningtire marks of my sister’s car, where in the stretching scare, I was a teenager and collected the last words of all the writers I had read, practicing: “I should say somethingclever.” My sister’s widening smile before the metal pressed our bodies into the dashboard and steering wheel. The seconds met us, concussed.Safe and on… Read more →
Fetal Swallows
Wintered, withered fruit fromconcrete patio; half-shadowed,shaped as the illusory top halfof a molded, mummified bird.Fitting and molting into hot palmsof Florida sun and curiosity.Blackened slick of first lookfeathers. An infertile fruitcurled with womb-death.