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...

 all in a days work 

12am                i close my eyes 

                         but dont no sleep visit 

1am -                i worry...

The Good, Good Men

Theo had come all the way from New York with no luggage. From the parking lot Miles watched him spring from the train and weave past the other travelers, sidestepping their children and suitcases with practiced finesse, first of any...

TRASH

Saturdays, it was my job to pick the bones
from cans of fish which became the unwieldy
piles of pink flesh that, once fried, became the cakes
we ate for dinner that night, breakfast the next

day, dinner again to close the loop. Decades passed
bef...