Category: Poetry

  • POST ABORTION QUESTIONNAIRE–POWERED BY SURVEY MONKEY

    after Oliver de la Paz  1. Do you feel reluctant to talk about the subject of abortion? In the center of the ceiling a marigold weeps or perhaps it’s an old chandelier. Inside, there’s an interior glow, shards illuminated in violet-pink  and layers of peeling gold leaf.  Such minds at night unfold. 2. Do you…

  • WAITING FOR LEAVES

    Your brain had already started unmaking the rest  of you: nothing but gray meat, memories unspooling  so rapidly they became entangled, became knotted. And the medication had stopped working, but still, I fed you the little blue pills, the ones that reminded me of the little blue butterflies you said Satan sent us—gifts of unforgivable…

  • THE SCIENCE OF ___________

    “The French, I believe, have agreed on the term ‘aviation’  in case they ever succeed in flying.”—Century Magazine,  October 1891 Let’s agree on a word for _______ in case we ever succeed in ________ing. To the girls who lie down in fields, their bicycles on their sides, too, like horses asleep in the sun, know…

  • PUT ME TO SLEEP

    Chef slams the skillet down and barks something about being low on eggs. Four tickets in my apron means he’ll need another carton. Not that I’ll fetch it for him. I stay on my side of the kitchen. One time, a nurse said Saddam Hussein saved bread crusts for the birds. In jail, without the…

  • BLOODLINE

                    For Izzy The day that my insides                 became my outsides (the brown mess clotted  under my freckled nose lips curdled with curious disgust) I stared at my older sister      your mother  as she brushed her wet hair …

  • THE TOUR GUIDE AND I

    make eye contact when I nod  as I recognize the Spanish  word for lunch.  He makes special jokes  for the Spanish speakers.  I know enough to know that.  He stands at the front of the bus,  in English tells us the Mayan word  for Jaguar, the four types  of cenotes, the ways we  will experience…

  • BROTHERHOOD

    I wear my brother’s grief with the story of  my past: the character  in a hospital gown spinning around pretending to flip pancakes, being told: “You will not remember  this.”— People still claim: “He does not remember much,” but no space held there for me to reply, no  air to fly, ground to  land or…

  • AESTHETIC COULD KILL ME

    I know this from looking                           into store fronts                           taste buds voguing alight from the way treasure glows                           when…

  • Kindred (Long Distance)

    We sink into the cantaloupe snow, mountains  heavy on our bellies, our eyes ice-blind. This is love—  This is how we coat our throats, become  like mothers. The air is made of wool. We might be  a shoebox diorama: two figures, pools of glue,  country blues. We could have a home  in muskmelon, man and…