Poetry
Excerpts from “Boatman”
Excerpts from “Boatman”
let’s say we had a daughter
let’s say we had a daughter our daughter proximal to the apple-tree but never partaking of apples. not simply nor straightforwardly, in a way that makes good use of all the apple. our daughter who slipshods herself a compass, loves the irony of being lost but not the certainty. who has never not been a …
I Wish People Would Stop Sharing Videos of You
I Wish People Would Stop Sharing Videos of You Friend, I can’t look at you now without revulsion. You, whom I loved in your body: your teeth, your nosewith its tiny horn of hair, spatulate fingers,soft upper arms, those Revere-style dropped r’s.This captured, animated you—smiling, plump and pleased—is this your ghost?Some say you come in …
My Therapist Tells Me to Take a Walk in the Woods
My Therapist Tells Me to Go for a Walk in the Woods If something is broken in me, it’s my admirationfor forests. They remindme of the windblown boyfriends I refused to bring home––sludgy, tousled brutes, their bark-carved names now callused over and forgotten, pastless as this spectacle of petalsdotting the grass. I’ve been too long …
Still Life with Boy Scraping Blood
Still Life with Boy Scraping Blood I didn’t want him to touch me, so I left my body for the clock on the wall, always a few minutes behind. I became a fly with glass eyes enamored by the Orb-weaver spinning an elegant ending. I was the emptybirdcage in the corner of the room, where …
Circus
Circus The mouth tracedthe skyline in a wait laced with mother tongue trainedto fire. The ghoststhe gods left usgood. In my father’s closeta can of bullets.I put one in my mouthto chew. In my father’s closeta gifted gun. Still wrappedin saran wrap. Ribboned. Flowered. A good old fashionedclown. My father’s handslike my own hands big …
“Untitled [Maybe you know]” and “Untitled [I wave at you–]” by Lyudmyla Diadchenko, trans. from the Ukrainian by Padma Thornlyre
[untitled]Maybe you know I know you know you are me.Maybe I know you know I am lost.Snow rhymes with sky and hunches its shoulders.The cold builds walls like Qin Shi Huang. Our evenings reenact Matisse’s dances,A mediocre melody that should break an octave higher.Maybe you know I know with whom you are cheating.And after Matisse’s …
Partial Autobiography in Three Parts
Partial Autobiography in Three Parts I.Once a daisy was a microphone, and I sang into its petaled star. I had a knack for hiding in the pantry with my books. An orchid for a barrette and an erratic longing. A lollipop stickied my knuckles, purpled my lips. Once I fished an apple from a barrel …
“Sea and Stone” by Elske Kampen, trans. from the West Frisian by David McKay
Sea and Stone Come into my room and see, I am not there.My cardigan, still body-warm, is draped over the chair.I have lent myself to someone in a T-shirt, someone witha boy’s sharp teeth. How he pulls off his shirt, withhis eyes closed or open, I want to know. How sweet his tonguetastes, how hard …
I Go for Supplies
I Go for Supplies Evening, a downtown library.Lavender in the garden empty of bees. Books on Blackhistory, Black boys’ joy, Black soldiers after WWII where I look to find Quartermaster, the stories my father told. A rack of books wrapped with pink heartsand twine, pale green bamboo paper with glitter to choose blind. Upstairs, books …
Black River Falls
Black River Falls what do you expect was availablefor repast that day in black river falls?a plate of cabbage, black bread, stewed apples—all bewitched, a vexed and vexing table.twin pillars of the family—perched, fatmournful crows, caught in the open iris,waiting for justice to be dispensed, astag’s head between them where the scales once sat.the only …
Georgia O’Keeffe, Pelvis Series, Red With Yellow, 1945
Georgia O’Keeffe, Pelvis Series, Red With Yellow, 1945 For Shira Miles away, maybe it was dawn. At Ghost Ranch, in late June, Oppenheimer nursed a mint julep on the porch, just another guest. Her bones weren’t sacred, merely liminal, the hard memorabilia of animals, here bright instead of bleached, a fossil giving birthto fire. She …