Poetry – swamp pink

Dieback

An American sentence acrostic after Lucille Clifton In rooting the tree, I planted the seeds of disease.One key lime shed blooms, coiled its leaves, spent a brittleweek or two brooming the sky clean of clouds. I grieved for the wood that had to be taken against its livingwill. It couldn’t remain, not even as...

Close at Hand

Transplanted in the woods, the iris rose from swords to fill the garden with color neither lavender nor periwinkle but close. They smelled of grapes if you came near, but few would, afraid of forests and ghosts, spirits from centuries ago, from where no one exactly knew. The rhizomes had seemed a cross between stone and rope, some kind of chord...

Connective Tissue

As if a tongue was more than muscle, silver. As if silver wasn’t muscle. Each split into a fork like snakes our mothers taught us to fear no matter how many times people from the city came to show us we should love them. Too strong a verb? Say then admire, appreciate. Look how snakes never sing, or speak, and feel no...

Aubade with Music from Selling Sunset

For so long mornings occurred without you. No leveled up karma boss, no ready set money—you couldn’t get out of bed, true colors in a get it, get it hurricane. Your dreams were a sleeping bodybeside you, back gently rising as queen light streaked through the shades. Battle on, the day chirpedfrom the hall. Play the game but break...

Pantoum Post Two C-sections and a Stillbirth

Bladder to uterus to bowel, soft and cinched– Doc says, nothing to undo that your body won’t redo. Womb a knot in the cradle of my pelvis, scars stitch and tie and tie again. Doc says, when it’s undone, your body will redo  all the places opened like a mouth,  scars stitch and tie and tie again. How many fingers does...

O it's on

Cute rips filters through the aquavelvetSlit though without me slinging sodden clamsOr pushed up or even convenientlyFlattened. Same me flatters by dressing justlyReady for that laugh, it gets meThick like the mixed heightOf it. Looks almost real likeExpensive touching. But I lose it and can’tMulch it, that’s my flaw.My head attached to my body, or...

Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt

Inang, who knew me when I was only a mouth: forgive me. I used to be better at being hungry. You knew me as a twink when I abstained from meals with the confidence of a god. You were there with me on vacation at Fire Island when I accepted the exorbitant price of chicken fingers as divine intervention, when...

Power Loom

Only at night, only by clot do I scratch, think,I want to buy, to mark on map my stuffingreach. Money is an idea to fabric into nothinglike money, a runway before the snap. I’m pinkas speed, a loosened chord comportment.I wear that bug with a hinge to stingscraps. Each click’s a look roostingspikes back, like...

Letter of Openings and Closings

for E.V.R. Hello stained glass cornea, Dear this morning’s blurred edges sun coming over the hill of her hip. Oh Hello, Elysium hips! Dear lovely haunting of her sable spacious hair. Dear thing I didn’t know how to dream. To the party that clothed us in enough smoke and noise To touch. My Dear hot pink...

Zaire

For T. Zaire. G. The daytime moonlike a coin of cloud.One moment from youthhaunting me lately—your stretch limousine bodyon the couch behind the schoolauditorium, smoke encirclingyou like black koi. I live soinundated with fantasysometimes I can barely seewhat I’m holding.You were my brother’sonly friend, so your deathis just his. But I can carrythe porch...

Visiting Pahá Sapa

After Yusef Komunyakaa Cottonwood sun slicks our foreheadsas the truck grinds through granite teeth where my favorite ghosts drench the crag-rock, rattlinglike cicadas. Gusti, you crack the brakes, slide out the driver’s side. We unfold the webbingof our legs, hook thumbs in what’s haunted us this far. Winter has not wrecked us yet.The horses thunder...

In the season of the Aurora Borealis

Caitlin lets me in the store where you had worked, offersleather jacket brushed auburn & creased at the elbows with wear. I had slippedit in your backseat like a letter while we lounged on the hood and trees teetheda freckled sky. Like all letters mistakenly addressed, it’s been returned to me.In the pocket, a bracelet...