…the same blue we call life on these
sandcastle mansions, tops of volcanoes
long gone, silent, sealed up for the
day of the lord’s appearing,
that even now are low humming,
from the seabed, their limestone ligaments
called islands…
once upon a time i knew
only one girl with a Ventolin pump.
how many times we going bun
Riverton
scheming for contracts
to out tyre tower infernos
Good mornin, how are you? In our waters, sharks speak. In this town, women learn early the delicate dance with beasts. When to move, when to freeze/when to respond without speech/with a smile fine enough to make fillet out of him.
the past
remained just as it had been
nailed fast
to the special moorings
of the future
can you imagine what longlong silence-in can do?
fury&grief locked in embrace cycloning constricted
space? i feel i know why she — he — us — thepoets,
stillstaysosilent.
Looking again citizens see, saw the cruise ships’ sail
Where north never meets south like east meets west
On second glance down south
We sacrifice our homes for the tourists
Nesting on their dollars like sea turtles
On the edge of high tide
brokenness is what we do
because piece is all you want
never all
never whole just hole to
throw your waist into like every
other next garbage man
Black mint oil,
stout,
brown-skinned woman,
spilling into the space,
grey hair wrapped
in black
herbs sticking out
Just yesterday, Matilda and me was in de backyard,
she, pouring slurries of syrup, white sugar, and water
into small plastic bowls, long twigs in dem like ladder,
fi help bring back hungry bees dat survive de hurricane last year
His belly full of cosmos, fat balls hanging thick, vibrating with the big clit energy lodged in the base of his hairy spider dick. Griped with the need to part the thighs of others, the will to power…
The salt took what it needed.
She gave the rest —
the cracked bone, the silent name, the dust of Bihar —
entirely to the soil.
That’s all.
That’s everything.
now that I am her mother I struggle to carry
my world and my mother together
like she carried me
afraid and alone
