grieving gets its discipline done,
that’s who’s not gone’s abiding
rehearsal—biding’s ghost shit,
right? supernatch: cabinets,
corridors, doors soon rapped at;
chill heavy in grim, dim scenes;
bleak dispatches bleed through
plaster, baleful, late-authored.
and by and by the passed thing
what’s fitted stiffly—pallid,
mad tragic—in night’s cut,
fixed to get to what’s bound him
thus. wailing’s a murmur first,
louder, now, as an argument.
CM Burroughs is associate professor of creative writing at Columbia College Chicago and author of The Vital System and Master Suffering, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and …
City of ghosts. City of dead cars. City of nah to the songs
that say blah, blah, blah. Is this what I get
when my father’s dead. Is this what …
they come to pay respects like devotees
and offer libations for seat numbers at your kiosk windows
and you grant them not just a gate
but even a time of …
It’s all uncles and cousins, proud black men
of urban banter in a small backyard,
car parts in a strange box that stains. I watched
those rough hands rummage
through …
“Exide Battery-Recycling Plant Contaminates 10,000 Homes in Poorest Los Angeles
Neighborhoods, Nets No Jail Time”
L.A. Times
If you are lucky in this life, only …
for children and their caretakers during wartime
Co Tu sang not sleeping
the lamp lit
one year old toddler me near-death
war attack aftermath with stomach sickness
I am in a eucalyptus grove next to a playground. I am seven, or eight, my school is Catholic, and recess begins and ends with a bell that stings. You …
The midwife kneeled beside me
and when she stroked my thigh
on the toilet seat I noticed the image
of a baby tree, wavering in the deep-
rust stain of the clawfoot …
How does the night move?
There must be a moment
when it moves over your body.
You are half night, half day then,
you are a sister to the moon,
