The women in a familyI.In softest cream cashmere, silk drapingwrists of verbena, vanilla, rose.Bronze chargers under china, layersof scent: rosemary roasting turkey, breadbaking. Today...
For Therapy, I Mix Metaphors
From a frozen wedge of machine-split pine,tossed on this settling fire, one frayed, martyredfiber curls back and away like a...
Captives
Life and time have held us captives— turnedThe moon an imposter in the affairs of the night.
The justice-chirping canaries of yesterday have buriedTheir preaching...
AGENT OF CHANGE
During the WinterOf your discontentYou craveThe warm embrace of Spring,Knowing it will fade away toThe scintillating heatOf SummerBut you need not worry.No!Because...
The Pianist
Władysław Szpilman in Warsaw
Music grows on wave crests.When the sails of sound are at half-mast,music breaks up into pebbles.Each soloist is a finger...
Change of Elevation
When we first moved here, birds—red-headed house finches, I believe,a family—twittering high up
in the blue spruce that hangsfrom the neighbor’s yard. You...
The Vision of Meribah
I Meribah,granddaughter of Amenemhat,beloved of Ishmael,recite my ancestors’ lessonsso that you, my child, may teach them to your own.
It is through...
There is in the Water
What happened here the history I mean thismean thing there right there the bridgewhere they were lynched and who elsewas there and this is always here Ito make them mean something and howcan inanimate objects say...
occupier artclasswindow is crackedopen to let fresh air in. outsidesunny schoolyard under
lovely cloudless sky,the kind of blue beggingto be licked and torn asunderby hungry...
