Ode to the tuna melt

Because I was eighteen and telling my best friend,the godmother to 

all three of my not-yet fetuses—I ain't never seen no black palm, a

cheese slice, and tuna spoon preach a sermon at a congregation of hot

and buttered ciabatta. A...

Outside

Yes, I lost the lottery. I can never write about the moon again, only the neon ball locked between the dog's fangs, only what it's like to see without glasses. I buy expensive oils which come in dark bottles labeled Sleep. I buy expensive oils...

I’m Offered to Officiate a Plantation Wedding 

Mice and rats don’t crawl over her 

In a crawlspace. She does not drill

 
A hole in it to watch her children; 
Lay on her back or stomach; stop 

Hiding for a moment to exercise out 
Of a binocular, lack of...

When They Accuse You of Destruction

           after Audre Lorde

bell’s echo in war, your laughter

will be like this, this may be

knowledge, this being known

will break the world,

the sight of you, you are

will be unaccompanied, par...

Orientation

Bag groceries at the market down the road. Because your mom

says you need the money. Because you need the money. Paper

or plastic? Don’t mess this up. You know how Cheryl gets. Eggs

and bread on top, meat on its own. Carry them out. Hold them

...

In My Infant Mouth a Darkness

My mother says it happened

before they started stitching her

together. She lay a spool waiting

for the technicians to rewind her,

herself just given birth, herself unraveled,

empty. And then they took you,

she says. Naked in my...

We are all living fiction        

It never occurred

to me to open

the window, the hell

would I want

with the sky?

The sky’s stuck

in last year’s snow

or something else

soft to sink into;

maybe we’d sound

soft enough on another

plane...

Bad God’s Blood

on my God’s first sermon      I tariff my grief  & do not wish to carry the cargo of the lost alone     

I don’t want the world’s brand of heretic          I adopt a religion...

REVIEW: Gary Simmons: Fade to Black California at the African American Museum

 There she is, as if alive. She is haunting and haunted; a Hollywood Miss Havisham in her crumbling mansion. She was once a real person, a somebody, a fond recollection...