Maskot #1: “They sure do love them some black pain.”

Tell us duh one bout yo grandmammy’s hands:
            callused and cookin, cansuh everywhere but her hands

Eight Poems

My thighs r so stacked
Steep steep steep
Fkn ziggurats
4 u

Overture

Around a pool of sorghum

thief ants lower their mouths and twitch in the feed

                        each animal growing by

accretion,

Bent to the Line

We paint smiley faces on Pop-Tarts for greatness.
I can’t read the fine print, but that’s okay
since we’re already screwed.

Nonesuch

This eucalyptus,
with its elliptical leaves

dangling, light and dry
as an abandoned chrysalis,

with its modest bunches
of pale pink flowers

and languid pose,
is my unattainable ideal.

[I Had Three Wishes]

I had three wishes
& I did not ask
for beauty so beauty was not
what I was given

Three Poems

The world wants me to know  
it’s okay to slip into and out  
of her. She likes it.

An Alternate Universe

It shadows you in an alternate universe of everything exactly the same and so like this:
exactly the same corridors into which darkness echoes its own expansion;

Running the National Marathon, Washington, D.C.

The wind erodes our cheeks like limestone, awakes us
to our run. There is more than one way to see ourselves
in the Sphinx.

Odaxelagnia

When I sink my teeth into you,
there is a taste, a satisfaction, the start
of a match, the catch in your throat.

Feel Happier in Nine Seconds

My happiness is twice
your size, gold-chained
to the lamppost. It strains
its waistcoat as it grows.

OF BEING TRANSMITTED ON A SILVERY ALIEN WHEEL

 Last night’s songbird. Tonight’s theremin or kite. Owls, abduction. Alighting lights.

YOU WORE OUT YOUR WELCOME WITH RADIANT ABILITY

Tarred, tarried July above the finger-point
of by-law. Quiet men

are quietly roofing in runic arrests. Progress can be stopped

Two Poems

The lucky hum of plums and peaches.
Or a tangle of
                        lingering. Skin and seeds.

Manifesto

Make a mountain out of every molehill. Roll up
            dirt the way a kid gathers snow around itself
to make a man, but skip the coal, coal in mountains
            a major reason molehills must make do,

Indicators of the Probability of Rain

There is little, of course,
to leave behind when you’re not here.
Incisor. Mandible. Quarter moon of bone.

Three Poems

I’m done, too, with this talk of tongues
                        and how a mouth can be undone

by something lifeless as the sea.

To My Indeterminate Half

The ossature of this living moment slips

Beneath your skin, unspoken

Or unbroken without allegory, and if I must now give in

Icicle Creek

At Icicle Creek, I find the fox dead and gray.
I see a woman standing over his corpse.

Her tail whips behind her, stirring air.
I pray to be harmless.

Women’s Work

I work to make
my body a comfort. My body:
            the table where strangers sit to be served

                        as king in a court of cross-stitched
            felons. 

Four Poems

With sight aborted would I be
    you, bloodstone chamber
beside the lost-to-me river?

You be my business?
   Not these words that return you
only in dreams

The Turtle

Translated from the French by Andrew Zawacki

Outcomes and Assessments

And above all else, you must remember
our raison d’etre, the mission of our
institution must suffuse your syllabi
from top to bottom.

In a Time of Thuggery

A great deal of what had been frozen in me
melted in America