Category: Poetry

Let’s say truth   is an airplane   with jet fuel   windows

From where I hail, Sunnyside, poor kids teased other poor kids for being poor.   Wars and progress lured black folk out of California, Louisiana, but, mostly, elsewhere Texas.  Quarter horses strode alongside Monte Carlos and El Dorados. Bobby Bland and Johnnie Taylor were prophets. On New Year’s Eve, chitlins strangled the air and didn’t relent till King Day.  Old steppers, like Daddy,…

Do prunes miss being plums?  Well hung in bunches  plump, purple bumps  blooms buzz-in the bees  then plucked to dry alone  shrink, shrivel, sugar-bled  black sheep of the dried fruit family,   apricots, orangely luscious, live on in trail mix  Want to read more? Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine.

A piece of paper marks your first breath  and the measurements start  printouts point out goals scored  and games lost  records are kept of pennies spent  and pennies saved  Intelligence as a quotient counts  for what no one knows  calories, reps, laps are counted  and compared on graphs  where you are plotted   as one of many…

we took an arizona hiking trek drove through the mountains— a phrase which is the perfect exhibition for our species’ destructive capacity and while we didn’t make the road we still made use of it following the winding asphalt not knowing where it’d lead nor where we ourselves were headed but somehow still knowing this…

A pair of severed legs walks into a bar. Two severed arms greet the legs at the counter. Legs and arms don’t have mouths, so they play handsie and footsie. I’m sure you can imagine what it might look like. Plus, the legs still have their feet, and they’ve learned to point their toes. (Makes the exchange more efficient.) At this point in the story, I cannot…

somewhere between shame. and the hornet’s nest. i unroll   my stockings before church. nylon that cannot forgive.   the sharp of thumbnail. or the clumsy angles. my foot   makes on the way. to reinforced toe. there is not enough.   flounce in the world. for my mother. my body under. her   creative direction. a bolt. wound tightly. with tulle.   above church door. hornets. plotting their revenge   on a lawn of sweet-spined aphids. in the quire.…

O drippy dilly-dally- dancy mistress of love- mancy, spark in me your secret to sloughing off your form. O sweet-soot, singe my dysphoria-dipped edges, puddle my teenage shame on the floor. O paraffin prophetess, promise me a future where I flow like you, know like you that the warmth I seek glows deep in my…