if you do not know how to
without emptying it of anxious colors
we are all rotten with choice
but photosynthesis
is for plants
the wound produces a rainbow
of its own accord.
don’t fall
graze
over a slope that un-yeilds –
nothing is isolated
in this ecosystem
plant, animal, ether, protein
translate this in another language
you know nothing of and then
touch its words …
JESUS DOESN’T LOVE THE LITTLE CHILDREN AS MUCH HAS HE USED TO
ain’t that just the gotdamn truth?
red & yellow? nope, don’t want em’
—especially the red all their blood later
the oranges still steal
crimson-wet land breaking
heads & contracts raising
stone cold towers over
bones anchored with steel
from golden peril.
is the black & white
still precious in his sight?
well, one of these is.
look how comfortably snow drowns
all color. drowns the brown
in …
First, my father with his guitar and mellow tenor like a campfire,
after a septennial of babies, bulimia, depression that clung
like woodsmoke. Then,
my half-brothers’ father, a black man, with his soulsong
and the way he could split you with laughter, slit your arm as he
dragged you by the leg and a stray nail bit. You ran to Canada, forced
migration. Third, your first cousin, his eight kids, your …
/ Read ›
I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband;
a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains:
take it, but do not make me suffer long.
– Marie Antoinette
when you come for me
if I’m making dinner,
let me put the knives
gently to the side—
and turn off the pots
to write my note,
to …
Terra Incognita
And I’m generating, I’m generating,
oh my babies by the millions where
will you all sleep?
—Helen Degen Cohen
It’s like when one of the dragons who patrol the edges of the known world
breaches beside the ship we did not know
we were sailing, water spraying off its scales;
or when a long-forgotten word swims …
/ Read ›
