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persimmon season

January 13, 2025
grieve the end of persimmon season—a year without their caramel flesh. january unspools unendingly, sparrowsballistic among the fractured elbows of meadowsweet; the sky melts charcoalto apricot, snow silver & curdling. how can a body withstand this?tape-measuring time by surgeries: colon resections, an ectopic pregnancy,an abortion, a crushed foot. your heart smashes. every good shell youhold—...

Rock-a-Bye-Baby Boogie-Woogie

January 13, 2025
On the twelfth floor of the Belvedere Hotel, I pass a door that says EMPLOYEES ONLY. Through its rectangle of glass reinforced with latticework of wire, I see three small green dumpsters, each stenciled in white CENTURY WASTE. They are piled high with black trash bags. A week’s worth of hotel garbage to be taken...

Valediction

January 13, 2025
Today is all we have. Today was also all we had yesterday, and will be all we have yet tomorrow.How are we supposed to sleep at night, save for  the utter exhaustion of our biodegradable forms?There are philosophies of coming and going toengage in, without actually moving your body.There are economies and expenditures of being to ponder: semiotics...

ANALEMMA

January 13, 2025
The day I turn my back to youto speak, in orderto, in older words and think I never told you apart,we look in a line. Nearlytied to words, half-living, that with each turn changeby half. Like it is Junestill the sun outside turns the pale grass whileyou hide from it.All we scrawled at one another’s...

SHAPES MADE IN A DANCE

January 13, 2025
I copied my restricted lifedown in an imagefrom whose marks clots collect—like knotsunder clouds,one flock of them hawking as low as mistslung along the shoaling waterthat flattens itself over shallow, rock, cove.What’s named’s notknown and, pictured, can’t be negated either. It’s a deadvast place atthe line where water silts and in a tongueof fingers like...

Autocrat

January 13, 2025
The Generals fumble with their instruments.You too, could be a tyrant’s girlfriend. Blessed be stridulation!A leaf might fling me The dark wields its variegated rays of light.The hyena proclaims its innocence.

Mallards

January 13, 2025
I proclaim, I proclaim:The duck is an odious nemesis. This kingdom is made of minnowy echoes.The fern exhales its umbilicus You are inane, dear duck!Your ablutions are filthy water. And your bill, your bill, your bill—It is utterly ridiculous, Failing to contemplate this miasma,These shadowy beams of light!

Ekphrasis for an Alcoholic 

January 13, 2025
This is the seduction of haystacks: sun’s shift melts dismal to beryl, warms to royal blue. A patient person can wait out the worst  with a hot mug of coffee. A mere half-hour  and everything’s new—I’m changing, you say.  Amend: I want to change. You mean time  brings a fresh canvas. Plum to pinot noir,  fruit to ferment. But blue has already...

I look at myself in the mirror after gaining 50 pounds

January 13, 2025
my body is a shameful wonderI’ve spent months hiding from itdashing from mirrors  I touch my hipsand don’t think of lovers         but ratherthe feel of tightness or compressiongrasp my belly            observe an eruptionof darkening dimples I can’t remember a time I lived in my body without apologyfor its breadth   my thighs peeking belowtheir own impatient country    at...

Femicide

October 29, 2024
Resurrection, Joan Snyder you cannot wear a red dresswhen rape and murder have sewn itso must document it piece it intosequenced panels that recount violencedisproportionately wrought againstgirls and women with a didactic handyou must remand each newspaper storyto the custody of our view cut themto scraps paste them into collage thuslyto make a mosaic of...

Fairytale

October 29, 2024
En El Bosque, Lydia Panas in the woods I lost sight of youthat moment you were caughtin branches that must have tangledyour hair and sent you trippingover unseen roots thick undergrowthof the forest floor denying us passagein these woods without clearingor sunlight gathering I have beenseeking the way to lay my body downinside your shadow...

New York Presbyterian/Weill-Cornell Medical Center

October 29, 2024
One day, something happened:I saw the sound of blood. I was dreaming of you.I created you. I came out of my body and saw my body expand.I arrived for examination and saw my temporary living quarters:heaven. Immediately, everything can go wrong!(Even your teeth! In dreams, my teeth become soft.) I give birthto water, near-useless in...