Even My Kinks are Unreliable Locs tossed,gagging ona red bandanatetheringpart-strippedpartly gaspingpartly resignedmy body has learnthow to ride the wavesand still arriveright at the borderof even more need. I go on the internet.Safia still writes of Khartoum& her loved onesZukiswa and other comrades,alongside their flotillashave been abductedright on the shores of Gaza.Pants down,Nigeria, my country dancesaround […]
Rage Let’s get into it.Dad t-bones a Ford in front of your entire fifth grade classroom.The sound is less like impact and more like something splitting down the middle: an orange, a thought, a damp sweatshirt with the wrong cartoon.There’s an ancient Korean proverb I half-remember:A man is a fist with no future.(Every translation leaves […]
Anna May Wong As Optical Illusions Fig 1. When I arrived within the wintered studio,I arrived at the centre of the vacillating concrete junglethat has shaken off its bare-brambled branchesof old lineages. I arrived at a scintillating heliosphere, white heat andsunspots, where the light fell throughthe darkest shadowswith greatest intensity. Fig 2. I was told, […]
First Reconciliation Abecedarian Against my irreverent impulses, I enumerate my sins:blasphemous dinner requests, stressing my parents, switchingC to D on a science test after squinting at my smarter neighbor’s sheet.Decanting my guilt in the booth, I want Father K to know I’ve learned eleven Latin phrases and tried hard to be good. Yes, when a […]
The Strangeness of Survival Today, I am thinking of deathand everything about it. Yet, I do notwant the butterfly nibbling at the flowerverse in my room stamped to death bythe unsureness of persistence welling upin my head. My window is open and thethings outside of it and in their fullnesssay to me, son, come outside, […]
Little Fish Drunk Girl holds my hair back, pets my head, says Good, good, get it out. Hands me wadded toilet paper, tells me to wipe my mouth, to blow, and takes the soiled tissue from my hands, tender as communion. Drops it in the bowl. Drunk Girl, still stroking my hair. It’s ok, you’re […]
Un-scientific report on the possible side-effects of ADHD medication for people searching ‘will stimulants make me a different person’ on Reddit I stopped thwacking tree stumpswith axe-handles. Gravity got a little better.Closer to Mars, maybe. My laundry laundered, my hair got softer. I couldn’t make sandwicheshalf the time still, but I’d sit on the kitchen […]
TRANSFORMATION upon rewatch of sex & the cityrealize ur my mr bigfailing to heedthis dispatch from africa“ a lot of giraffes, i saw abt 10 giraffes ”the birds at the monasteryhave diff-colored eyestake ur pick—they’re all for usugar on a grapefruitpink salt on a rimthe american westzen when u count ur green“ loose-fitting hospital gown […]
Didn’t I? Before they put Missy to sleep because the woodchuck was rabid //before she held it under water with her long snout and breathedthrough the sides of her mouth // before she snatched it by the scruffand trotted to the pond with it dangling from her mouth // beforeall the snarling and growling as […]
self-portrait as a boy scout uniform official tan uniform topmade of 100% supplex nylonthat does not taper at the waist blue neckerchief with red and white edgesheld together by a silver, three-hole slidethat fits far looser than it used to straight cut olive green uniform pantswith no room for hips any wider than a boy’s(they […]
