poetry

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What Occurs to Me This Morning

What Occurs to Me This Morning

When I wake up you are raving about home renovations and Duane Allman and showing me doubling guitars— like how sometimes you walk around strumming the one you built yourself, or play beats you soon forget but I can sing for months. My stomach hurts and I’m tired and...

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lonely and great god

lonely and great god

my spine is curved & looking down on the earth.the other day, a stranger raised my chin up with her  finger, asked the name of my loneliness, & walked meto the end of the road, my hand in hers. before i was  born, i must have wished, with all of mygoodness,...

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Renting a Room at Home

Renting a Room at Home

    My house is furnished with jars of tar and spit they don’t belong to me but take up the empty spaces Leave the TV on after dinner to drown the stillness with canned laughter or politicians on the evening news if the volume is loud enough, then you can...

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Concave Seats

Concave Seats

Days that walk in slippers andbrush baby hairdid not hear fatherstell other tall men I madea mistake withcigarette interruptions her lilac dress suit and purse clickwelcome asphalt and kindergartenwith puppets inherited over hands ofchildren who hadn’t heard I am here...

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For Dionne Brand, or, Another Person in Another Place

For Dionne Brand, or, Another Person in Another Place

Mysteries conjugate. Mystery conjugates. What becomes of clarity. In the final remove. Time as time. The past involves itself in the present to what degree? A unitary voice is always manifold, in combination. He is drenched in things his father will never tell him....

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Us

Us

Us,romping in the uncut grasseswe gathered across decades.Us, our hands, squeezingthe desperate pigments from four soured walls.Us, singing with daytime vigorand doubts all heaven-bound. Us,and these word-taught lung whispers propping up the big ladder,watching the...

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Coitus, 1915, Egon Schiele

Coitus, 1915, Egon Schiele

     I remember fondness dirtier. The stark contour, your touch. The things we’ll do bereft of nerves. The light’s hard. The rug burns.   Where would I look for comfort in a body? A lover’s full weight only disappoints me. Damp breath on my mouth....

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Encounters with the Memory of My Abuelo

Encounters with the Memory of My Abuelo

Abuelo, going back to the pueblo, the home, the place where I grew up, and not finding you there, makes me feel lost. I feel like I’m in a limbo, in an empty space … I cannot think, I just feel a lot of emotions emerging from the bottom of my chest. It is like a flock...

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Circular River Theory

Circular River Theory

Process.ion 35, Urte LaukaiyteBach and Us     When I see a pond, I think of   how you saw a koi fish orange yin stitched on its back and fattened by the waning light knowing the salt of its yang didn’t belong in soy-noted dipping sauce but in the lurch...

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Three Johnny Carson Poems

Three Johnny Carson Poems

Plaque Depicting a Quail Chick, Unknown, Egyptian, Ptolemaic Period (332–30 BCE)The parrot in this one can talk   The bird at first was rescheduled Johnny had bronchitis, could not speak the parrot she replaced died the night before air   When the bird flies...

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v v

v v

Process.ion 25, Urte LaukaityteAnd what of that black bat who wove through the yard in the early evening?   Did it see us?  Our synchronized eyes fixed to its wild circuit which just grazed the surface  of the swimming pool before its upswing into the Kayce’s...

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Hold Me

Hold Me

Blue Gray Violet Wheel, Yvonne Estrada On the train a man tells me I look just like his daughter. He crosses many feet to say this: you look just like my daughter. He shows me a photo to prove it. He wears a reflective vest:   maybe a construction worker, or a...

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