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Delfonic

November 30, 2017
Trace the line & move until the ocean turns you, or when the northern hills begin to burn, or a squad car herds you back to the neighborhood you clearly belong. Once, rolling down the window, I felt the Santa Anas pulling against my chest, and naturally, I imagined a jailbreak of buffalo in a...

The Stir of Your Avoided Life

November 30, 2017
You didn’t wake in dewy blue bitter panic or prairie june or spangle grass— no field, no shopping- cart encampment of tarpaulin and toddler’s clothes—though wet- eyed, though whelmed in bottled- up a.m. light, your lungs confined like tidal anemone or beds of strawberries tucked in their black plastic sheeting. You can get used to...

The Blueprint

November 28, 2017
If it isn’t one room, it will be another, When you find your way back, chalking The walls, the better to lose yourself again My dear, there will always be something That cannot be described exactly As a room: a stairwell, a closet, a porch With the one light left lit for you, & If...

No King, No King of Kings

November 28, 2017
Bhutto has come to a slum in the city of Karachi. It is 1972. His path is strewn with rose petals, sprinkled with rose attar. It leads him, our unexpected pilgrim, into the alleys and passageways of the slum. Ferdowsi in Shahnameh tags it as “the place of worship before any others existed . ....

To the Reader

November 28, 2017
When I rose from all of this, briefly, that morning, as if from the grave, to walk a path through dune grass to the beach, and let my eyes rest upon the gratifying geometries of the horizon, and nobody’s soul was fluttering around anxiously, and no one waiting upon the place reserved for god’s signature,...

Toy Train

November 28, 2017
Up to a point, precision the ability to change direction Twice cites the mountain as a major influence Summers in the attic Renovation and reverse loop Sometimes breathed upon heavy in the night Trouble coupling, uncoupling Nothing, my love, to deliver Knows beyond warranty the end of the track Long-standing complaint against the whistle

Glitter-Brained

November 7, 2017
Those winds were so many hands—inventing offshore waves the moon broke in silver lips. & This sun was a spasmodic filament; a pulse on a red cherry stem. Glitter- brained hummingbirds stitched. Elders inked sutras. Blue plums & grasses & stately cellular structures & possibilities were there. The ocean fluxed: I witnessed that recreate. Beaded...

Suppositions for Skeptics

November 7, 2017
Suppose we’ve undersold the rhapsody. More apt to graph a gap or galaxy, we’ve voted no on maybe, pigeonholed our hope like so much extra seed we told ourselves we’d never need. Suppose we’d known. Just as a stream exploits the cracks in stone, fear works its witchy runnels through a brain parched hard with...

Against Against

November 7, 2017
They said love should never appear in a poem and I wondered what to do if I love the cicatrix of a leaf the way I love the pattern of nerves fanning out on an anatomy poster or the divergent and converging futures trailing across our palms. When they said to remove the modifiers I...

Sonnet with a Wishbone in the Throat

November 7, 2017
I trussed the hen and cut the breast clean, pliable, soft with cartilage. I thought my mouth could swallow it whole, but the bone went brittle, broke through the skin of my neck like two thorns. Its prongs scissored out above my clavicle. Windpipe split in a perfect Y. When I speak, each phrase kaleidoscopes,...

Race Man

November 7, 2017
for AB You rode me not to be a mule when I slipped into lyricism Summertime & the livin’ is easy carrying that same yolk thinning my voice to a nasally timbre Kum Ba Yah indeed Break the glass of the line Get the ax & get at it Bring down any poem with heavenly...

Bombs Fall Near a Zoo

November 7, 2017
There is communion of the beasts and so their bodies sing: an elephant (her gray chest rising) trumpets on her side, the sound an otherworldly sound, like stone gates pried apart.  An ape stands vigilant beside the bodies of three others.  Reaching out, he prods them with his hand, unrolls their fingers then releases them. ...