Women Wonder
Because my life of secrets spilled
onto a slideshow and little girls
that watched the movie version cried.
Because they invented an American lie
detector test that telegraphed
our sex …
Poetry
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Unfastening
Honeybee to pollenless
branch, “try”
the diadem, go “with” before
going.“Do you see the sky?”
“Do you hear the dogs barking?”Yes. And yes both.
That is what happened,
that is to … -
Polly Magoos
For Julien Poirier
Old Holborn yellow, Zig Zag “Le Zouave”
Barcelona chocolate, Kronenbourg pint
four rose for you, heated terrace
rain street, an ambulance passes by
Turkish Techno, European tourists -
On Ice
This girl can make a tile floor an ice skating rink, and I see a
rock and say, Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock. One of us has magic
and the … -
Boy in the Woods
It is wonder that brought him here
The deep crease in the bark of a pine
A place to hide things,
And better yet,
A place to go.Triggers of pine …
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Consummate Flower
Granddaddy Darwin’s delight
in the vegetable economy—
the best of garden conceits
clotted with sexuality:flower love like gunpowder!
The nectary, the wall-bee,
“the depredations of insects.”
Insects by acquisition. … -
Compromise
Bat wings cut through the evening sky in prayer. A
teacup by the sink gives you pause. You realize that
while the answer wasn’t metallic in your mouth,
wasn’t announcing … -
Raising the Pine
The welwitschia mirabilis
lives, knotted, for thousands of years
out in the African sun. Its two leaves
become a tangled mass of time
as they grow outward.O Namibia. O …
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Exits
I saw a woman decaying on the street.
Not waiting for her light. Not looking, not caring and
No one hit her.Later
I saw a woman with anger crusted
In … -
Stuffed Lines
When dead (when you’re dead), jealousy feels six times worse, otherwise everything is the
Same deal. Back in life, they put my intimate, personal letters in the second-best collection … -
Prayer
November and the metallic whine of schoolyard
swings trawls me back to the confused daze
of childhood in which the only rules stricterthan my mother’s nuns were my own bylaws:
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Juárez
for Jair Cortés
He said he suffered a strange affliction
for a parish priest: God dyslexia—
He only saw the hand of the divine
behind the drug-cartel dystopia
that had replaced …