“The night turns slowly round, Swift trains go by in a rush of light; Slow trains steal past. This train beats anxiously, outward bound. But I am not here. I am away, beyond the scope of ...
“Instead, let it be the echo to every footstep drowned out by rain, cripple the air like a name flung onto a sinking boat, splash the kapok’s bark through rot & iron of a city trying to f...
“Friends describe my DISPOSITION as stoic. Like a dead fish, an ex said. DISTANCE is a funny drug and used to make me a DISTRESSED PERSON, one who cried in bedrooms and airports. Once I b...
“I like to say we left at first light with Chairman Mao himself chasing us in a police car, my father fighting him off with firecrackers, even though Mao was al...
“Never step back Never a last Scent of plumeria When my parents left You knew it was for good It’s a herd of horses never To reclaim their steppes You...
“she ambles toward El Norte she remembers as she steps wasps & spiders webbed in between the corn in Fowler her mamá Concha’s story the fire she fanned to clear the path through the thick...
“Sleep falls, with limpid drops of rain, Upon the steep cliffs of the town. Sleep falls; men are at peace again While the small drops fall softly down. The bright drops ring like bells of ...
“When I stepped homeward to my hill, Dusk went before with quiet tread; The bare laced branches of the trees Were as a mist about its head. Upon its leaf-brown breast the rocks L...
“for the two of me the thing that eats the heart is mostly heart and there I wish, in the burly sun blossom-backwards garden I was hungry, so damn hungry and afraid again by full open-mouth...
“My ancestors are made with water— blue on the sides, and green down the spine; when we travel, we lose brothers at sea and do not stop to grieve. Our mothers burn with a fire that doe...
“for DMK When I thought it was right to name my desires, what I wanted of life, they seemed to turn like bleating sheep, not to me, who could have been a caring, if unskilled, shepherd, bu...
“We should not have produced all this life. Let’s say I am in a state of heightened attentiveness. Is this my gift? Do I take your head in my hands and swivel it, or cast marbles around o...
“We’re not from here. We don’t aria, we warble. We wore suits to get here, rumpled by the hot car ride. Pumped our own gas. In Heaven two days, still the custom shirtlessness offends....
“Three sang of love together: one with lips Crimson, with cheeks and bosom in a glow, Flushed to the yellow hair and finger tips; And one there sang who soft and smooth as snow Blo...
“The sky-like limpid eyes, The circular infant’s face, The stiffness from spats to collar Never relaxing into grace; The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years, Showed only w...
“Rate your pain the physical therapist instructs and I am trying not to do what they say women do lowballing the number trying hard not to try so hard to be the good patient scattered ass...
“God likes to be played like a piano. Dawn glows with sailors dancing in the eye of a storm by the river of black water. These days things make sense under the green and yellow and brown sk...
“so well it’s like you’re my real lover, the reason I can’t stay attached to anyone, making a heaven out of beginning again & you knock at my voice as if I could speak you back in a...
“and I didn’t mean to, this was not my intent. I meant to say how I loved the birds, how watching them lift off the branches, hearing their song helps me get through the gray morning. Wh...
“Say Stop. Keep your lips pressed together after you say the p: (soon they’ll try and pry your breath out—) ― Whisper it three times in a row: Stop Stop Stop In a hospita...