Lost Child

It is possible I’ve written all I can
about her, my friend, who once saw
my coldness, young as we were, as
might.

Essay on Terry Pratchett (A Corollary)

If you die you are by definition not a reader.

This is the immortality afforded by literature.

On Surmising

Did you stagger back to her
            or did you float
Did you wheel into that decade
                        once madly lost

Two Poems

As if pleasure isn’t

           historical. As if our bodies

  are not

 tightened, thinned,

    or relaxed according to

dictators, bureaucrats, the inventors

                                                of trans fats.

Gambling Myths

soon as the boy’s body breaks
water, it’s divided into clay
poker chips. they drift like wet
leaves to the bottom of the world.

“Lower the Pitch of Your Suffering”

. . . Free is not a negro doused
     in white, blanched,
bleached, and sent down
     the path. Free

almost never means alive, so
     please try—
I’m asking for help.

From “Sagas of the Accidental Saint”

March 3, 2014, Iberia Parish, LA—

Police say that Victor White III, 22,

shot himself while handcuffed

in the back of a police cruiser.

Between the Palm and the Ear, Is the Master’s Language

Three Poems

As men
shuck oysters
in the open kitchen
I imagine your body
opening
to be eaten
alive. You will die . . .

Think of Lampedusa

Translated from French by Todd Fredson

The Idea of Order

I stand to my chin in the
     cyan sea.
Salt burns my nose when I
     look down.
Nothing is near that belongs
     to me . . .

Cher Baudelaire:

Today as I boarded my train of thought, I thought of you, your bristling ennui, and, in my mind, I opened my umbrella in the face of the porter carrying my cerebral baggage and in the face of that beauty with a nose ring from Phoenix.

Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code

I have learned to be still

I have learned that I don’t have
     to go anywhere

to find the center of the universe

Anything can be that center . . .

2016 Poetry Contest Winner: Cori A. Winrock

Nothing fits properly in this 
     space, Little Sleeve.
Are you watching? The way I 
     am crawling across

the walls of every room of the 
     house like a wet
near-dead thing. Like the sad 
     sack that I am.

In My 31st Year

OK, so it’s true
that last week I let Andrew,
half in the bag, a little 
     crumpled,
cuff my wrists, then
perhaps, too familiar, wing an 
     arm
around my neck . . .

Trading Post

Swap an Aztec maiden for a 
     cask of mezcal
or a swine for a boy. For
     compass follow the ship
     ahead
scanning the water for slaves 
     fed to the sea.