Sweet Mary, the first time she ever was there, Came into the Ball room among the Fair; The young Men & Maidens around her throng, And these are the words upon every tongue:
“An Angel is here from the heavenly Climes, Or again does return...
A las cinco de la tarde. Eran las cinco en punto de la tarde. Un niño trajo la blanca sábana a las cinco de la tarde. Una espuerta de cal ya prevenida a las cinco de la tarde. Lo demás era muerte...
At five in the afternoon At the stroke of five The boy brought the white sheet at five o’clock A basket of lime all ready at five o’clock The rest was death and only death at five o’clock
A swimming pool hotter than bathwater. Chlorine haze. My mother along the edge encouraging me, with my Curious George, to swim. Though I liked the Man with the Yellow Hat better.
Chlorine hazy and my mother at the edge. Swim teacher says my legs are...
I am afraid of your transcendental death. When people say think of a man. I think of a brown man. Sometimes the earth grows khella because she can feel our suffering. Yooooooing beneath Costco tikis.
Here’s what I had in mind, kōtiro, this clipping at words like overgrown maikuku — return the blankets of domestic life; don’t fold washing or wear shoes, polish these rerenga kē.
Eh. But this world. I s’pose neither of us planned to be in politics, never did...
Two feet of snow at my parents’ place, in another season. Here, the cicadas sing like Christian women’s choirs in a disused cotton mill. Belief is a kind of weather. I haven’t seen proper snow for three years.
How many books now have the word Last In their title? Or worry, or some dangling variation Of mistake? Or empire burning, or The fools have fucked it up?
Who the hell listens? They roar and Wriggle, up and down the page, They screen-print what’s coming...
Do I have to dress up or can I wear jeans? Dear Joaquin, casual Sunday is a plus! Can a woman be fully present in heels? Remember the other day at the shops, we saw the T-shirt that read “Blessed” across the front?...
Memory was the room I entered down a long corridor Thrown by the white drugs of pain though pain Was adrift on a glassy stream of green tide Where images flickered and ran on
I didn’t write poetry for publication In those days but to...
The new root of the fern is the part you eat in famine. Harsh words are spoken, but they’re not the ones that make you turn. Where the muscle’s smooth. That’s where it doesn’t fray. The hard part is what comes easy. The...
here. Have been for centuries. No, longer. Everything already has been. It’s not a reasonable place, this continuum between us, and yet here again I put the olive trees in, turn the whole hill-sweeping grove down, its mile-long headfuls of leaves upswept so...