Poetry |
“Shipwreck — the ark” and “Selva oscura”
“& the night says thank you to the trees with abundant shadow / & sleep requires humans to double down on darkness / & the trees are prison bars / & humans are afraid to enter there”
Fiction |
“The Three Trials of Silent Lady“
“You could catch a ton of codfish within sight of Cape Cod in the early Eighties — which was why my shipmate Chris and I stepped aboard the fifty-foot school-bus-yellow gillnetter Silent Lady late one winter afternoon …”
Poetry |
“Biopic” and “Resting Bitch Face”
“And I pause here to tip my honeyed wine // to Sappho, her lost words ever on my mind. Sappho, / another straight-mouthed beauty, her poetry / so revered her face was stamped on coins.”
Poetry |
“Unaccompanied Minors” and “August From My Desk”
“Every day, across borders, behind walls / Other mothers sigh and begin walking / Their children down the early road / Into the unknown, off to living other lives.”
Poetry |
“Canticle of the New Order”
“… if you make mistakes / let them come in waves / in cookie trays champagne / glasses music boxes / unmade beds …”
Fiction |
“Poifect”
“Martin’s wife crawls onto the lap of the politician. Martin’s wife feels that she and Martin must become more civic-minded. They are local business owners, after all. And all politics is local.”
Poetry |
“Hungry”
“… someone says / ground pork / napa cabbage, / and another pushes / a highchair up close / for a child in a pink T-shirt …”
Poetry |
“Bodies”
“And what’s the deep meaning of body / fragility? Transience of all things? Supremacy / of soul? Need for pleasure to counter pain?”
Poetry |
“Prayer” and “Community Garden”
“It is a prayer of only-pleading and not only for the dear women who loved me, / but it must attend to the mess of the world …”
Poetry |
from “The School of Clara Ward”
“God give momma eleven, then took all but three. / My days is less than all the cents in this money. / My church is third in line. After family. And me.”
Poetry |
“Swatch,” “Mozart’s Colandar” and “tree”
“Not the haze of loss / when light dims today, / only rotation, / a different stance towards the sun.”
Poetry |
“The Neutral Ones,” “Mom Turns 79 During the Global Pandemic” & “Shut Up Amy Cooper”
“… that strange morning years ago I woke up / out of time into a middle space // between dreaming and perception / and for a flash was no one, just me // without a body …”
Fiction |
“Virus Child” and “Open Letter to My Grifter”
“I don’t remember my past bodies, or how I was swindled into ending up in this one. How I owe you essential parts of this one; how I’ll pay for this one.”
Poetry |
“My God is Oath, My God is Abundance / Full of Grace / Ghost (Spectre)“
“To call a people “black” is to say they can be from anywhere or nowhere. / To call a people “american” is to say that the origin no longer matters. / Growing up in New Jersey, I would say to people: / My dad is Canadian and my mom is Trinidadian.”