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At the river there once was a glacier, now there are seashells

October 2, 2024
I’m always talking to my mother over my shoulder                                                                                      retracing steps along the riverbank                        gray with last season’s dust washed                                                                      up on the bankside clovers and ivies. Some days I hear sepia, green tea.                                        There it goes again says one of my mothers, the one

Mating Pairs

October 2, 2024
It was actually, actually my birthday. Barnacledto the ancient, spilt-drink dance floorwhen the queens hollered us celebrants upto the front, I shook with all my clothes on as I remembered how the penguins danced that morningin their enclosure. White sand and clear oceanwall-papered on the room’s walls, a little poolfor diving. Me in my good...

46Pd :: Fights! & Smites &! Repulsor Rays!

September 24, 2024
Romance it slant: the petawatt lasers & superspeed, rewire reflex & human fragility. A real Howard Hughes allegory: all jets, tuxedo, trumped-up tech never quite correct: that impending death is somewhat far- fetched: I’m not that toxic nor that dense. I shine galactic ballroom on the jetset, make the entrance as eminent catalyst for tragic...

ACROSTIC IN WHICH I CONTINUE TO SAY GOODBYE

September 19, 2024
Maybe you are with my mother, or yours,Able to look down at the roundUmbrellas lined up on Hollywood BeachRemembering the drum circle, the way the full moonEmbroidered the ocean. Is it day orEvening where you are? Do you care anymore toNegotiate time, its nonlinear Sequencing like a collage? Here onEarth it’s even more dire than...

POEM IN WHICH I’M EMBARRASSED

September 19, 2024
Some days I feel embarrassed and ashamed—a grown womanmaking her living playing with words, solving anagrams for fun. Bill Knott said the world needs more poets, not more soldiers— and yes, the world needs creation not killing, imaginationnot destruction. But I could be planting a garden, sewingup a wound, or making baby clothes for someone who...

A Study of Horses

September 19, 2024
            Once, I turned catching the light of a late afternoon through the maples—coin tossed to the dying grasses and late summer clay and nothing else. A little ways up the road, the Seventh Day Adventists sold oranges and because I didn’t have any money I pulled over to watch a horse I’d passed by...

Desire Lines

September 19, 2024
I. STATUS QUO A guy once told me                that if I could define the stakes more clearly then I might really have something in these pages about my little miscarriage. II. CALL TO ACTION If I could clarifythe inciting incidenthe might find his footing       in a narrative structure.He could trace desire,recognize change,interpret what on Earthmotivates...

POEM IN WHICH I LOSE TRACK OF TIME

September 19, 2024
First gone is the year I was born—was in 1961or 1691? My analog clock melts, Dalí-style,and my calendar pages fold themselves into origami.I show up to the dentist on Christmas and bastea turkey on the 4th of July. What’s in style?Should I wear my go-go boots or Uggs?My pillbox hat or disco rainbow wig? I’m...

The Odor of Money and Abduction in the Labyrinth of the Night

September 19, 2024
The air smelled like the flavor of metal. Brake fluid burning but clean. Something so far off as to befamiliar. “I want to believe” but I can’t afford to eatin airports. The ad implies there is an edge to the universe. It arrived when I was eight. Moved through the melted sagebrush and pine needles,...

JFK Flight Delay

August 27, 2024
visibility is alkaseltzer in a foaming glass. snowfall reaches around slowly cinchingup its buttons. drips of milk,nipple-latched earth, hungryfor something not itselfthat comes from somewhere else.your body smells of arrivals and departuresthough you stayed the whole night the same place.from your hotel room last night, reaching for it—asking for—beyond bodily pains and croissants.a sign of you. swallowing...

Night in the English Village

August 27, 2024
translated by Khaled Mattawa We, people from villages, know the night:The date palms seal our mirrors.No palm fronds swaying in the distance.Or flopping swordfish that wandered to our stream.We scamper to our mothers,close our eyelids in the bliss of warmth.A lullaby takes ustoward what appears like Hijazand Najd.Only then,we are who we are. Has the...

Paradise of the First Buffaloes

August 27, 2024
translated by Khaled Mattawa If only this country, that was once waterwould return to what it was: water. What to say for myself now that time has pushed me to the edge,now that the covenant has broken. Baghdad is a prison,Basra stricken with cancer,Al-Qaeda in Mosul. What brings water and fire together?What brings clay to...