What the Fingers Do
My daughter learned to point
in a cemetery.
There were many deaths that year.
The priests’ black shirts grew discolored from sweat.
Florists did well.
Pillowy, white fabric lined the open …
Poetry
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for a jakarta microbiome
because do calls this house an ecosystem
where straddling folioles tangle mighty-fisted
along a wire canopy he strung
above the brick-and-pot garden, and city fox
coming like a client for bananas they feed it …
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and Sundays.
Sundays are for the depressed
half-naked
dancing in alleys
of fiction
of fructoseSundays are for feeling small
submerged in our dreamsmisty eyes
and
mild madnessgreen drapes
and
country musicSundays are …
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The Last Photo with My Father
At the threshold of the sitting room
Standing
On the only stair that separates the door and the floor
The device snappedThe father, his amaranth red bubu
The son, his … -
We Are Part of Those Who Keep Wake
We will keep wake up until the boundaries of insomnia
We will not sleep
We will pluck out the eyes of drowsiness
We will pull the bed away from naive … -
A Storm Like No Other
What storm is brewing
With the falling of dead stars
That lie along these alleys of sea foam?Suicidal waves
Rise and crash
Into the throat of a gaping gulf
Which … -
Hot Stepper at the Gates of Hell
who now pleads with the ancestors
seeing with naked eyes the gates of the deadwho now sees the impossibility of life
finding at last the answer to the questionand wonders …
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Thousands or Millions of Tiny Dots of Varying Size
Once, I drove through Virginia slush to NRA Headquarters,
the winter air humming
with the … -
I’m not sorry for the summer I gave you chlamydia
because there were bees.
And I’m not sorry for bees.
Not even the two who buried
their stingers in me and made me cry:
one by my left knee, one … -
What’s It Like Escaping Something Trying to Kill You?
A minister blames this on the slaughter of unborn children. We enter a tunnel, and my breath
holds itself for comfort. My father suggests we find a copy of The Green …
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The mothers were drowning
At first, they said the mothers were drowning
in their own waters. Each mother agreed.
I am drowning she said. They said you should know
it is not your fault. … -
Who Takes This Desert Home?
Shadows stick into the horizon
like thorns of flame.
I am a magician,
angels on my right
illusions on my left.
On my shoulders, sands that lost their way
spout,