Poetry |
“The Holy Embraces the Holy”
“The chaplain was Muslim, Ali, // and the patient was not that kind of Texan. / ‘If only more Muslims were this nice, / the world would be a better place,’ / the transplanted lone-star said to me. // Leaning against the wall, hands behind my back, / I nodded in cold agreement.”
Poetry |
“Even Birds Leave the World” and “My Cloak of Not Knowing”
” … I knew I could spend / a lifetime not knowing how sorrow had become my second skin, / and that no matter how far I traveled, the sky would be the same / though disguised by different weathers.”
Poetry |
“Slow Seed”
“Listen to a nurse tell how she holds a phone for hours / as dying patients FaceTime family. / Twenty in four days. / Tell me how she does this.”
Poetry |
“Make Your Home in the Imperfect Present” and “Two Stones”
“How many times have you awakened / to one more stage rehearsal / for the main event // that never seems to happen?”
Poetry |
“Twelve,” “Conduit” and “Permit me to write my own ending”
“Someone was in the house, in my room I tell the police. The summer / I turn 12, standing in the kitchen Karate Kid cocky. Fingers wild // with popsicle juice & the murder of flying ants, their bodies burst cranberry / on the wood parquet …”
Poetry |
“Or What Else Could We Do But Raise Our Hands?”
“… when silt, dust, / shards, erase boundaries, words / break down, and scattered letters / run wild in search of meaning // we raise our hands …”
Poetry |
“February in Deep Melancholy” and “Morning”
“She’s calling from a great distance. / The bulbs are coming back! The ones we ripped out! / They’re coming back! She’s moving around, / speaking quickly between things.”
Poetry |
“Having You”
“… partly because of your hanging back on your heels to my pushing / ahead on my toes, yes, / partly because of that I am free to push ahead …”
Poetry |
“Letter to Time,” “That Kiss” and “All Told”
“Let me say it again: / do not come back and hang out in my garden. / You’ll frighten the children / and the leaves will fall – I’ve seen it happen.”
Poetry |
“Three weeks” and “Retail requiem”
“May we guard against those forces / shuttled through their online replacements, / may we one day understand the psychosis / that built then eroded what it built, that was us”
Poetry |
“Nocturne with Shaved Head”
“I learned tonight you shouldn’t / dig a grave on a Monday unless you want to dig another one / within the year”
Poetry |
“Today Is the Feast Day”
“Today is the feast day / Of moving to the mountain / And a house in the clouds / Away from the city and people there feeling / Unsettled as clouds”
Poetry |
“Who Knows, Maybe,” “Above the Graffitied Wall” and “Euphrates”
“Who, now, can recall / the impetuous fire sizzling in the veins / of the world? A cold spell, and its impenetrable / forms are dispersed.”
Poetry |
“Wild Mother Apples of Tian Shan”
“Nikolai Vavilov’s family knew the gaunt aunt / of famine. He grew consumed with seeds / and craving, peeled away / in delicate curls their genetic passions … “
Poetry |
“Farmers” and “The Long Goodbye”
“Each mass I’d / Stare at the wall / Where the farmers // Stood and smoked, / Near the door, / Before the fields.”