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Up That Tree
There's Sort of
A Squirrel Thing

January 13, 2026
I don’t stand anymore. I can’t stand anymore. In the need of your company I don’t have, I don’t stand. I don’t  stand a chance says the heart to the body. Stand what chance says the absent body in response. In response, I was a stand of trees whipped around by violent  winds just before the coming storm.  I don’t stand at all anymore says a felled tree once the fall has come and gone for all the...

i go back to september 1987 

January 13, 2026
after Sharon Olds  i see them standing at the bus stop, young, the smell of back home still  lingering on their months old luggage. english a coat of paint slowly drying  on the walls of their communication. they are waiting for another journey to start: a trip to a Brooklyn high school i will learn of from their future stories. my mother will say my father was persistent.  my father will say he wanted...

the lougawou discusses privilege  

January 13, 2026
i was always a portal  for other creatures, even before agreeing to  the bòkò’s pact. now, i am my own muse, choose which shape i want,  craft a schedule  of spirit-swallowing around convenience.  sometimes shielding means stealing a baby  into the never-  to-be-seen-again,  or, watching a man  struggle to keep his  last breath & writing  my name over the doctor’s  diagnosis in invisible ink. what i wouldn’t give  to no longer worry about my skin salted  by a vengeful villageror hidden from me  until after sunrise. strange how my  inhumane...

In the Beginning, Twins 

January 13, 2026
             My sister,               purpled, tender              as a hyacinth bulb,   fitting in a palm, unfurling to petals, lungs—two grains of rice,  crushed before first breath.               You were born that way—              my weight bore down               on your spine,  broke it like a vine. For months, we shared  a sac of sap. Two red roots.               Sheer pulps, we fluttered,               swirled. Lullabies               crooned in the dark.  Women gathered  to choose our names. Little pink bonnets, bows,               bought or hand-sewn               by grandmothers and aunts.              Some burned wild rue, esfand, ...

Blue Mouths: The Infinite 

January 13, 2026
I grow a blue mouth— blue lips, blue teeth,             a blade-thin tongue.              I go to the sea  that beckons me home— a return to thirst’s origin.              The sun haloes             the clouds. A coronation?  A wedding? The water  glitters, frothy as light.              I stand on the sand,              watching heads  vanish. When I dip  my toes, it could be             my head beneath.              If not for the horizon,  I might cross.  Afraid of slipping              into the infinite.              No rooms. No...

No Hand to Save Her 

January 13, 2026
Forgive me, Father Almighty             for surviving              the first riptide.  I thought       I was meant to live   when my fingers                                                                       raked wet sand.   I rose             from clinging mud,  limped home—                                                            what home? Mother drowned             in her cursed sea.                                                              No hand to save her.  I did not want a life                         like hers.  Never good              at diving deep                                                             into the maze never had patience                         fins, oxygen          hunger for the abyss—                                                               its wreckage. I always asked, Chera? Why?                                               چرا؟ چرا؟ چرا؟                                    Why, why, why?             You didn’t like that. Now you ask                                     What...

Why I Called You 

January 13, 2026
It was because I had love in my heartthe way a deer has home in the brush, the way fifty deer can blend still  with the naked oaks and wizened leaves  on a day lit pale gray, how the manwith bad eyes won’t see one untilit moves, and how, if he feels gracious,  he’ll smile and call them sweet  babies and...

Uncertainty Principle

January 13, 2026
The sun has brokenfree from its night spent                                           wrestling with the dark                                          side of the earth. I look              through the lowlight at the small house             on the hill, the one with the even smaller                           people inside. The more I know how fast                          they move, the less I know where              they’re bound to land. I’m left to imagine             a line...

if you had a girl like we 

January 13, 2026
  you would have nothing at all     our fine porcelain & high foreheads     misbehaving laughter that gives away the outlines of our mothers     we, unable to iron them out     our first & forever instrument     the albums that had in childhood     incited us to habitual greed     when Ashanti runs back to him we are propelled     further from our fates     gluttony grown like no-good men     & we...

Dog Years

January 13, 2026
Summer a pit bull is deboned in the backyard. Summer a grandmother knits me a cap I will never have to wear. Summer drought adjusts to us,  night beetles erupting like coins. Summer we sit on our hands, competing  to see who can scrape watermelon rinds white the fastest.   Summer we’re headless chickens and I plunge from the top bunk in the...

Home Altar

January 13, 2026
Hard-boiled smoke & why so little light? The silo- shaped ash tray collecting a crown of wrists again. These shady maniacs. Because of course. Someone pulls open  the back door to ask, Where’s your grandma? Hello, Darla,  hello, Irish. Even the house flies—gorged on dish soap  & apple cider vinegar—take time for granted. Whisked  off course by indolent hands, they amble blithely away.  Electric fans make language, long-throated. Brown recluse  up the arch of a...

It’s Not the Body’s Fault 

October 16, 2025
but yours is where the ache resides, site of a thousand delicate  harms—soft of a cheek on the soft of a cheek—and hers  a door upon which you try and try not to knock. Yes,  remembering hurts, though you won’t indict the jaw, skin  of the wrist, belly or its button, little hollow where the tongue  in your mind still...