Looking down from my second story porch
I see the flowering quince they say will thrive
in almost any soil. This one is no doubt
dead, though its faithful branches reach up
and outward, insulting the brittle dry
sticks that pin the massive bush to fertile
ground. Watery red flowers the color
of diluted blood once bloomed in winter
on its bare and twisted branches, and in
springtime, the dark leaves bore small sharp teeth
so that I thought nothing in the natural world
could kill it. But who am I to make such
bold assumptions?  Who knows for certain which
ones need to be nurtured, how fragile love?

 Stocking the Pond

 
             500 bluegill in a tank 
on the back of a truck, 
             parked on the bank, 

pouring them out. Fifth grade, 
             early spring. The year 
I was taught there were right 

             and wrong ways to be 
a man. I watched 
             the waterfalling bodies 

of the fish, our pond 
             like a holding cell.
When the valve closed, 

             one got caught and cut 
in half, the top fin and tail 
             just sat there in the grass, 

separated from the head 
             still floating in the tank. 
We caught them 

             all summer, kept them
on a line strung through 
             the gills. I hooked one 

through the eye, snagged it 
             through that soft 
and lidless spot, and the barb 

             came out through the front
of its face. I cried while 
             my father removed it.

I watched while he filleted 
             our catch, when he nailed 
a catfish to a board 

             and skinned it with pliers. 
What else can I say
             about my cicada-sung 

childhood, when I learned to do
             things I didn’t want to— 
years later when I danced 

             with a girl at prom, 
when I did not kiss 
             the boy I drove home 

from school, when he 
             offered. But when 
I was nine my trembling 

             hands were asked to hold 
the handle of a thin blade 
             and cut. So I did—

and for what? A quarter-inch 
             thick fillet, small victory. 
We ate the fish 

             with our hands, battered 
and fried on a camp stove.
             When we stocked the pond, 

a mist came off 
             the cascade of water 
and fish, the surface 

             of the pond was iridescent 
with some runoff 
             or exhaust—all so I could sit 

in a camp chair, 
             months later, picking 
little bones from my teeth.

Parable

And suddenly the ground opened 
             so I could fall in. The hard clay 

                          opening its arms to feel like safety, 
holding my body like a bulb, 

             mother’s irises in the garden. The air thick
                          with cicada calls, the air hanging 

on skin. She’s at the window calling out
             the varieties of corn in the field like

                          calling in children for dinner. 
But I am her only, her runaway. 

             At the table she reminds me
                          my blood runs red because it’s full 

of iron, red like the banks of the creekbed 
             I fell down as a child, flat on my back, 

                          eyes and palms to the sky, gasping. 
My body remembers

             that labored breath, these old pollens. 
                          In the cabinet I find a cream 

to prevent scars from new wounds, 
             another to reduce scars already set in.

                          But as a child I had no scars,
only musical names in my head before sleep,

             saying them aloud under the spinning fan,
                          Ambrosia, True Platinum, Silver Queen.

After I gave him my dented hands which in any case were still valuable
                                                                                      in the way that ruins can be,
   
I leave him for myself.
 
 
I spin-drunk en la sala, a spiraling summer,
I talk to my homegirls in the language of tomorrow –
                  girl, finally.                               I invite them to die with me
at the club.

I pick a man to wine into, until the dance is an interrogation. The last man was loving me wrong. My
hands crawl close enough to his face to feel his breath the moment right before he regrets me. You know
how ya’ll do, love a girl only when she is the brightest version of her pain. The way a shadow loves the
pavement only when the sun shines. Have you ever been the shadow? I mean have you splayed your body
so flat against a woman that you didn’t notice she was concrete? I dance for him the way worms dance in
honor of devouring a body.

My homegirls laugh until they are ghosts.

Sometimes what kills me is serene
as snowfall. Proliferating frozen,
soft inundation, the ceaseless
and so many ways of wanting

to die. I can’t sleep
for the 2 a.m. murmur
of the plows, making their rounds
for hours now, unseeing

metal sweeping and salting.
Rusted chrome in near collision,
compelled by the Sisyphean
labor of cold. To roam

the black in the absolute
zero before dawn;
                                                           imagine,

gathering and gathering and gathering the ice.

I’m a Kick-Ass Woman

Ask anybody. This ass has never been kicked 
to the curb. I do the kicking. I’m a nasty-ass woman 
drinking chamomile tea at dusk. I know what I’ve got 
& it’s a throne for an ass. Grab it. Kiss it. Pop 
the pimple on that ass. See what happens when you
disagree with my ass. I’ve got a bad-ass ass. A kick-ass ass.
A good-pair-of-jeans-is-hard-to-find-type ass. Cue Flannery’s 
ass, as broad & innocent as a cabbage. I’m getting literary 
on your ass. Listen: you can’t have passion 
without ass. Or Parnassus. Make way for my poetic ass, 
as essential & enduring as your thesaurus
but sexier. I’d tattoo the Cantos on my ass 
if it would make it less boring. This Is Just to Say: A Carafe Is a Blind 
Ass, or: I’m no Modernist. I’m the future 
of The Poetics of Kick-Ass—the voice of a nation 
from the mouth of a woman with the keys 
to the van that fits all of your sweet asses. Climb in. 
We’re bound for the coast. Bet your ass 
we’ll be there before dawn. Sit back & watch 
my Walt-Whitman-dashboard-hula-girl shake his ass
all the way across the American desert 
we’ll make an oasis of by the time we’re through.

Poem From the Mouth of God

There is a reason 
I have yet to let anyone
see my face. I am a lonely man

& socially inept. I send angels 
into women’s rooms 
because I never mastered the art 

of non-offensive pick up lines
& even with a wingman 
only one woman’s ever said yes.

She is tired of me.
Who can blame her
when I spend my days 

at every window in the house
shuttering & unshuttering myself 
from the view I created

& grew afraid of. My son 
doesn’t visit anymore 
& you’re not surprised.

Me neither. After centuries, 
the first miracle I performed 
was this morning

when I raised myself
out of bed & lifted a razor 
to my horrible face.

What advice do I have left
except that you should make things
& keep them closer to you than ethers away.

Do not be like me.
This light is the only good 
I’ve offered you,

but even light, too often, dies
in a furious burst.

THE CHILDREN
 

How each one is taken  
with care from car 

to school doorstep, each one 

hand-in-hand with an adult.  
How the mothers 

and fathers kiss 

their foreheads, first 
pushing aside their bangs 

or smoothing 

a stray wisp.  One 
parent straightens 

her daughter’s velvet 

headband; another wipes 
dried oatmeal 

from his son’s pink lips.  

How carefully 
each child is guided       

around the bumpers 

of cars. How some turn 
to wave goodbye 

one last time while others,   

drawn to friends 
by an invisible cord,

move together, first left

then right, with 
the synchronicity 

of fish.  How even the child 

with tears in his lashes
who cowers near a teacher 

knows that in a matter of hours, 

a loved one will return  
to him, to return him 

to the facts of home: 

butterfly net 
for trapping monarchs.

Foil blanket

from a space museum.
Four-leaf clover 

charms on a chain.

ANOTHER FORM OF SKIN

Hiding us all the times                we prefer to stay hidden.
                                        Piled by the door 
                                                                                 rumpled, forgotten. 
Brought forward 
                          in offering: burnt mittens, 
                                                                  torn shoes, bloodied handkerchief.  
I have hung on a clothesline 

                                                     shirts so white that I 
                                                                                felt surrounded by clouds 
or by the impossible words 
                                                                   of God.  Sometimes the wind 
blows through me 
                                       as though I do not exist, 
                                                                                             as though all form 
could go formless without notice. 
                                                                              Think, for example, of the way 
no one stands at the door 

                              offering a cabled sweater, saying 
here you might need this 
                                              it’s cold out today no one
                                                                                             except me, for example.  
And though 
                          there is no one, now, 
                                                                              inside the sweater 
here I am                        securing each button
                          all the way to the top, 
                                                    delicately lifting
             imagined lint                                            from a sleeve.

IN THE HOURS JUST AFTER, IN THE HOURS BETWEEN

Caught between one world 
and the next, between the buzzing actual 
of air breathed, streets crossed, 

food chosen, prepared, 
consumed.  Of sleep slept 
but broken 

again and again into waking—

caught between the easy language     
of regret and viscous words of loss, 
words that, like timid creatures, 

have tunneled deep into caves
for the long winter, and may never 
emerge again, such is the lure 

of the darkness
and the mind & the mouth hollowed out.
Caught between laughing 

about what he would’ve said
about attending to his own death           
Easy now, easy, take it easy now now now

and absorbing the infinite chill
of seeing he could 
no longer say it—

we speak of him, still, in the present
tense. Caught between calling, first,
the one who’d prepare his body 

for the grave or the one who’d 
tend to his soul as he’d wished.
Morgue or mosque, we ask 

him, mosque or morgue we ask
ourselves.  Again and again, 
the sound of no voice,

just the specter of one nurse 
and then another
shuffling down the hall in scrubs, 

doctors in angel-white gowns 
and shoes, their hairnets 
like deflated haloes 

clinging to their heads.

Oh the g-d in you.                                                     Thank you for what g-d you did today

g-d as gold            g-d as gone                    You believe there’s g-d out there somewhere 

among trash heaps that smell less these days                      because the plastics in them  
         no g-d old organics

you know it’s g-d because it smells as it rots                      most g-d things don’t last long

What kind of g-d don’t you believe in

My word is g-d                     He’s a g-d egg                                        No news is g-d news 

You don’t want to hear how g-d you are                        It’s not that anyone actually knows
                                                                                            but you look g-d, Girl, really g-d

Take a look in the mirror
you see nothing at all
That’s gotta be g-d
            or at least the image of g-dliness 

                                                                                                   At least you’re in g-d hands 

You don’t want to be g-d
because if you’re g-d that means                                              g-d can have cracked nails
                                                                                        with sky blue polish in the cuticles
g-d can have mistweezed eyebrows

g-d might be wearing dirty underwear                                  never as g-d as you hoped for
under a sundress that’s a bit too short                                                              no g-d at all

A g-d way to go                                                                                A chapped kiss g-dbye 

WHAT IF

my lips weren’t chapped. the candles: unburned.
what if they’d stayed like that all year: whole, slender
sticks, separate & shy. what if the ants didn’t
run in slow lines across the table, didn’t crush
to dark soot beneath a stray thumb. 
if I hadn’t touched the cake: unghost
the icing slipping through a fork. if I’d crammed
sugar into a plastic box instead. if I’d gone to bed 
on time, if I’d showered, if I’d combed
through each strand of my wet & blackest hair. 
would I have seen what I saw that night? 
across my phone screen, those grains of salt 
& rosemary rubbed into the roast chicken? 
your hands and her hands curled
across the knife? slash, slash. cut
me up. if I hadn’t known you or that year
we plucked apples from the branch, I 
would’ve laughed. chicken thigh 
on a blue plate in the kitchen I’d once 
loved you in. the candles lit. your hands
and her hands. flashing knife. and ants.
damn, those ants. scuttling beneath.
black as bolts. craving whatever: grease,
the hurry of lips over skin. 
a single, stupid crumb.  

DEAR SILVERFISH

respect me. you slim,
slimy insect I try to trap
first with a jar, but you
glint, real sly, then slide
beneath the ratty blue
rug. you slinky spasm.
you thousand-leg. 
make me squirm
‘til I grab the lavender
spray, lift the rug,
then spray a ferocious
cloud for minutes,
wetting your antennae
to the linoleum floor.
still, you live. 
body bigger than
a nickel, pointed
like a stick of lead,
stuck beneath my
glare. Just use
your clog, my sister
texts, yet something
about your whip-
thin body I cannot
strike. 

once, in a public park, I watched
the man I loved pare a fuji apple
with a knife. skins curled and fell,
lazy ribbons onto a lap. months 
later, I stood at the intersection
where green trees erupted 
& the park began, grief in me
whirring like a pest. o, old 
love. I cannot smush you 
with a shoe or douse
you in a clean scent. try to
violence you out yet still, 
you stay. a silverfish atop
my bathroom floor, shiny as
scrap metal. pulsing with
the dust, & stuck.