I. At sixteen,I keep my fingers crossedthe day I leave for school,first morning peehidden ina brown paper bag. In 1968 it takesa whole week for results,no simple wait to seeto see if a plastic stickchanges […]
Category: Poetry
Concertinaed
The barriers betweenAmerica and Mexicoare woundwith concertina wire. Who named thoselethal twistsfor music?for elegant bellowsthat welcome supplehands and breathesweet trills. Troops in the trenchesof WWl were assignedto wiring parties ––to unsnarlbarbed wire stashesand stretchthe jagged […]
Unintended Consequences of a Sexual Assault
I can no longer tolerate football. It’s like an allergy. I need to turn it off, leave the room immediately. This makes dating especially difficult in my stomping ground of New England #patsnation. Police stations […]
No poem about Malawi
I have not written a single poem about Malawi.It’s been more than a yearsince I journeyed thereon a missionto help girls stay in school. It makes no sense. The whole country is a sonnetof wandering […]
WFMJ: Phoenix
Dear old world, ~after L.M. Montgomery dear brave, fluttering, flowing old world, dear hungering world, cracked and blistered world, dear world embarrassed at yourself, at what you are capable of, bursting open in spring with […]
WFMJ: San Diego
Call Kindness an Anti-currency Call kindness sweat or carbon dioxide expelled. The essence of exchange between organisms. A natural resource that can’t be stockpiled or charged interest. Call it a setting free, not a paying. […]
Reincarnation
“Her wounds came from the same source as her power” -Adrienne Rich 1.I dreamt my father dated a man. He pulleda 3 x 5 from his wallet. Blonde strandsspilled off the man’s shoulders in black […]
Punk Boy
I still see him in cigarette-burned photographs,his hair a messy tuft of Medusa locks,streaked red, black, and green,his coke-rimmed glasses duct-tapedafter an elbow to the face at a punk show.I still see him glossy-eyed,lingering outside […]
Strange Fruit
for Abel Meeropol and Billie Holiday No one will hang you with a noose tonight,Either of sisal, hemp, or the chord of Southern steel. But falling on the narrowing alleys of your freedom,The Freudian slip […]
