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You were unburied 10 years before I was born, pulled from the Arie riverbed the day Nagasaki burned. You died like a samurai in your daughter’s arms, bowels flowing, head severed cleanly, falling to the water amidst the silence of dead human trees with their bark skin turned inside out, among the screams of the…
Read More "For You, the Unnecessary Dead of the American Dream"
Everything’s broken, diseased, sold and resold. The pandemic’s breath blows on us. Everything’s is devoured in a hunger never filled. So why do I see a glistening in the distance? In the day dream, a forest appears on the border. The scent of lavender and lilies exhales out. In the nightmare, the zodiac…
What is the land but dust but mountains but forrest but mud but lost sorrow What is sorrow but torn soul but wounded skin but a trail of tears. This day the Chickasaw Choctaw Creek Seminole Cherokee wipe the white mans dirt off their right foot with their left foot wipe…
Read More "A Prayer on Walking a Small Part of the Trail of Tears"
Up A seed is a forest-to be. A rock is a mountain-to-be. A drop is a river-to-be. A river is an ocean-to-be. A cloud is a sky-to-be. Clouds are an aspiring heaven. An apple is a pie-to-be. A brick is a house-to-be A house is a city-to-be. A city is a state-to-be.…
The light was so bad I made some clouds— little cotton balls taped to helium balloons drifting up to the heavens. The first were the standard balloon animals: dogs, sheep, horses, giraffes, lions. They folded conventionally but became much more creative creatures with more cotton piled on. The orange poodle became a bison,…
This soul is not a drip-dry thing. It’s needs constant washing and wringing to function cleanly. It needs to tumble on high heat to wear just right. Hand wash it and it will shrink in protest. Line dry it and you might think it will smell of heaven but it is the rancid smell of…
I am not a sailor. I am meant to die on land, ahes spread above sea level, or in a coddled urn above the hearth. My voice is paper and where I choose to exist, a white world that is not sky— this voice of mine. I have no ensign. My heart beats soft, beautiful…
It’s in the shading. It’s the way the light is written. It’s the way the observer takes it all in. It’s the way it convinces one that the world will last. It’s the way it plants a seed in the mind, the way it touches one inside, lives inside the streets of memory, inhabits…
Poetry can kill you when you shut yourself inside of it. It doesn’t want you looking for better words in other poems. It wants to cage you to the corners of a sheet of paper. It doesn’t want you to breathe the thing it won’t allow. It wants you to use…
