Category: Poetry
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Sloppy Grows
Cluttered stalls line the market streets And merchants lift up their offerings with both hands Knowing they have the public in their palms. What used to be shunned as a practice of the unrefined – Now exalted as the height of morality and health. All those hours spent in brightly lit bulk warehouses Are now…
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House Cat Pantoum
In the window, I watch and sit. Birds light and peck the ground. Into the air, they dart and flit. I meow and make no sound. Birds light and peck around. Bumping the glass and twitching my tail I meow and make no sound. Such slender necks, weak and frail. I bump the glass and…
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Warped
I.Escaping scars as the years slowly tick byis inevitable. Banging into walls, the bruises and blisters of liferun like a roadmap. Trophies awarded for fortitude,for qualifying for life,for finishing the race. They are the markof a well-lived life. II.What, then, about invisible scars?Escaping detection in a mirror’s reflection,they lurk in deep crevices. Peeking out just…
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Lydia
She pried open the shells all day.Or cracked them with a hammerextracting the purple veinalong the hinge of the shell.They were hard to open.She broke the handle on her little knife.She left the worm inside to dieor gave it to the poor to eat.Then wiped the white-washed walland left a purple hand. Featured Download: If…
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Economics of the Heart
You had to die for me to knowthe layers wormed within your bones—childrenare born narcissists, open mouthsand puckered fists. We commandwith animal mewls, gifted drippingnipples appear like offerings, a sacrificethat wrings you clean empty. For yearsI sliced away (a martyrmust have scars). I want,I want, I want and still … you with nothing left, I…
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A Preliminary for the Identification and Classification of
Tyrian purple [ancient Greek πορφύρα, Latin porphúra] from a species of predatory sea snails in the family Muricidae, originally known as Murex. In ancient times, extracting this dye involved tens of thousands of snails and substantial labor. The main chemical is 6,6’ –dibromoindigo. One of Paul’s first converts in Asia— a certain woman named Lydia,…
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Baby’s Breath
For the wedding you worebaby’s breath in your hairto quietly remindthat also in your dresswas a fetus tangled deep insidein tubes and hidden roomsatop an anatomical slippery slide. Tiny then, as the blossoms in your crown,but already sharing air with youand eating smuggled food inside. As the baby grewthere were timesyou breathed for me, too,when…
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Catalogue
It was a long time ago on a farm. The cows horse pigs chickens. The pond cellar farmhouse barn sheds hay-wagon fenced-fields a definition of function. On the table a fork butter-knife coal-bucket by the stove pump- handle. The dirt road is the oldest part of memory. Wild animals roamed at night. Hyena aardvark wart-hog…
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the girls, the girls
this place smells like hand-rolled-cigarette smoke burning, burning up and down the walls: my walls the small-girl walls he leans against giving credit to his big-man feet. When we are born they give us maps & the maps show us how to escape from burning things. They lead us to the muster point while the…
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Am I the Ice Cream Man?
Am I the ice cream man? Why else would the streets Fill & living rooms echo? Rose gardens smell of vanilla On Las Palmas as vowels Of celebration turn letters Into words; neighborhood Streets are blindly happy, Like a dream or maternity Ward. “Forza Juve!” from A random window: whoop It up. No need to…
