The Flaw

Notebook #17, 1993

 

The heart is the fragile part

that allows things to break,

which is theft, which is loss,

pain in expectation of pain,

daughters and sons of stars and inquiry.

Lights drape the sky like a necklace

that history so cleverly wants to hide--

because I understand how

the thief picked the lock,

because the glass knife is no ordinary key.

 

from The Glass Studio (2024)

ENDLESS SUMMER

​

The town where it is

always summer

has forgotten the famine,

the wars of winter that bled

into April. This town

with its porch suppers,

pale hydrangeas, firefly

dusks —— wishes

to recall just what bitter

herbs make the honey taste

so sweet. We decorate

our graves and ask

no questions. Passing late

when the moon sets, we hear

sobs from a darkened bedroom

and think it is a lullaby.

​

from Watchman, What of the Night?

COUNT ME

 

I know my lone

complaint

bears slender weight

against the backwards

and abysms

of this world.

Like you,

I read the news.

I’ve seen the floods,

the bombs and

wildfires, bodies

piled, the daily

spill of refugees

across the screen. Where

are the instruments

to measure grief—

the meters, gauges,

sorrow-mometers?

Among the lorn,  

the dispossessed

count me.

​

from The Music of Being

Losing a Homeland

 

It’s as if we are reading a book

with too many unfamiliar vocabulary words

and keep having to look them up.

If only it were that easy to understand the story

of how one loses a homeland,

how a young couple flees

with only a suitcase to fit their life’s belongings.

In their minds the sentences shortened,

certain words disappeared, some things

were unspoken until their hair grayed, fell.

Maybe they would never be uttered or heard.

How will our family story live?

​

(first published in ONE ART: a journal of poetry, September 2023)

Homeland Immigrant 

 

With nothing on my tongue but tears

and rebellion, I came to the world

Dona, Donna, Marie, Maryese.

Hayti, America: mountains, rivers, lakes, and

    valleys,

whose sallees were magnets for ones

   seeking,

wanting more, yes, before freedom. I

was familiar with margins, edges, the way

something falls short or is won. "Égalité,

“Fraternité, L’union fait la force”

Land of Liberty. Opportunity, New World. U.S.

Born black: two legacies, two names

for those like me, for living, living in between 

“Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité; L’union fait la

   force.”

Land of Liberty. Opportunity, New World,   Us.

It Was the Last Word She Said

​

as in I love

as in Take care of

as in Thank

 

second person, singular

or plural

 

bless 

as in I miss

or            

will

be all right

Skin

 

oh friend
how I’ve lost
and found you again
kind as a storybook nun
soft as the snake we thought
hung dead in the cat’s jaws but slipped
away flashing and free so fast
we all jumped back

The Raven Girl Iris

 

bulb in my hand, parched

from the mail—unwrapped

it lies rooty,

gleaming. Grasping

for earth

it will soon do its

good work—

promise

of rare black

petals in June.

Some old language

begins between us

as I locate the sun

& prepare its food.

Little plant of not-death,

not now.

I cannot unknow

what I know.

​

from The Call of Paradise

In the Anatomy Lab

 

That night, I unwrapped

only her right hand and sat, probing

to free the lovely network of cables

in her palm. Some impulse made her give

her body. I didn’t know her name,

 or one thing about her life.

 

When I tugged on the flexor digitorum tendons,

her fingers partly closed and her thumb

crooked in. I seemed to see the two of us

as if from outside, and could no longer

name the tendons.  I felt my fingers

from inside her hand.

 

Soon I would open the gates of her ribs,

would hold even her heart in my palm.

Afterward, always, home, to feel your palms

circling on the small of my back.

​

from Woman at the Crossing  (Grid Books, 2023)

A pooka in Arkansas

 

My dad was dying. He had been dying

for weeks. I went for a walk down

the old road beside the family home,

the sun declining in the distant trees.

“Be careful,” my mother said. “There are wolves

in the fields”—she said she had seen the tracks.

I used the walk to phone my love back home,

the man they didn’t know, refused to know,

a name they never used. The nearest field

was fringed with what the combines left behind

of last year’s harvest, threaded now with insects

and weeds. Tractors would plow it all down

soon enough, and death would be here, too,

soon. On the road ahead, a small dog

trotted just beyond me. The wind picked up,

I tucked my phone away. No one headed

out or home, no one on the road,

just the dog. It paused, looked back as if

to ask, How far do you think we’ll go tonight?

​

from A pooka in Arkansas (The Word Works, 2023)

INTENTIONS

 

Six months pregnant, I go to the eyeglass shop

to tighten the corners of my glasses—

 

but the man who attempts to help me

snaps off one wing by mistake 

 

and cannot reattach the hinge. 

With apology, he returns 

 

my life to me, and I hold it

in my hands, a crippled, sighing sparrow. 

 

Lunchtime faces near and recede—

plates of melted custard,

 

a Pissarro of emphatic chatter—

as I retrace the way I came,

 

fledgling slow, a glass piano 

on the floor of the sea, 

 

my body braced for 

whatever softness I should meet.

 

(first published in ZYZZYVA)

PHANTOM LIMB 

 

First the doctors peel my flesh, 

expose the bone, saw it smooth.   

Working in layers, they mold muscle,  

snug up tissue to cushion the stump,  

snip skin in overlapping flaps  

exactly the way you’d wrap a present,  

pleating sudden ridges and angles.   

And then, prosthesis: liner, socket, 

foot. I’ll walk, all right: you’ll notice  

nothing amiss, unless you’re watching  

in the evening hour, when shapes  

branch off in doorways, two by two—   

you’ll see me stumble on the side  

he always took, while in the houses  

doors bang shut, lights flick on. 

​

from Woman Drinking Absinthe, Alan Squire Publishing, 2021

DEATH IN SPRING (excerpted)

 

Death in spring

Mutinous birds. 
The message 
comes first thing 
in the morning. Gall 
of the jaundicing 
sun, rising sky. 
Quiet. Car engines.
Wisecrack 
of your blue 
hair. Lamplight 
of you. …
Death in spring. 
Wind readying 
to collect you 
as you drip 
away. God 
with you some-
where, beyond 
the language 
spring speaks. 
All the questions 
you’ve asked 
about God, ... 
And us, saying 
your name…
and the birds say 
your name. 
And the quiet 
creates a blank 
line. We sign 
your name 
to it. Memories 
of you, wiping 
your eyes 
with the 
stars.

ZINNIAS

 

There is never enough time to see everything

in the museums we visit most often.

 

I planted ten packets of seeds

and only these sprouted,

 

grew five feet high

and blew facedown in last night’s storm.

 

Watching my husband chop an onion,

I think of all the poets no one reads.

 

Rooted in air, rooted in smoke,

washed away in silt-bearing floods—

 

“Don’t worry, it’s firm,” I call out

to my four-year-old godson

 

as my right leg sinks to the knee

in the mound of dirt I’m climbing.

ON LANDMARKS

 

According to the book

on my lap, a toot is a hill

suitable for observation. A pap

is a mountain or hill whose shape

is thought to resemble a woman’s

breast. I barely know my brother.

At thirty-six, he knows

many things. If you ask

him about Charlotte’s Web,

which he’s mastered in braille,

he will tell you that Charlotte’s job

is to be a spider and Wilbur’s

is to be a pig. Even E.B. White

did not fully understand this.

My brother’s never seen himself,

and doesn’t read anything

into a landscape.

 

from The Knife Thrower’s Girl

A STORM

 

Tired of of / tired by by / your here-

fuse shortening / by

no means explosive nor in need of a voice-

condom / meanwhile

elsewhere / you’re not unlike a ballast

 

from in other words you/

Count Eggs

​

Break an egg, sing its yolk

into this yellow undulation.

The bowl steadies its rocking

until the stirring stills. Avoid

crying into this breakfast

beginning. Count eggs, while

there is no actual count. A clock

nestled beneath your navel

conceals how many are hiding,

who might stop its hands, start

some other timetable within, or

how to carry, no expelled lining

as you turn into oven, or cradle.

 

from Refuse to Disappear

Haji’s Ekphrastic Mental Mapping

 

Loathing the clichéd striptease,

Haji lays bare

the mapping of his mind,

submitting brain scans

for audience approval,

his frontal white lobe

like negative space

of modernist abstractions

around micro-explosions

of synapses.

Pollock-esque splatters

of orange and red,

primordial topography

of all his desire,

pinball wizard

lighting up the screen

with such a supple wrist,

medium as message,

part and particle

of the machine.

 

from Haji as Puppet

AFTER 

 

No one wanted to clean the blood 

in the shower, so no one did. 

 

Four days went by. My uncle would 

 

not go in; my father was missing; 

police don’t do cleanup. At last, 

 

my uncle’s fiancé went in with a bucket.

 

She was new to our country. The death

was not hers. She was nineteen 

 

and went down on her knees. She wore

 

rubber gloves. A year later she married

my uncle. Her beautiful face glowed 

 

by a candle; her dress was a shiny, deep

 

peach, not white. No one was closer 

to my age when my mother shot herself.

 

Back then, I used to clutch my shoulder 

 

with the opposite hand. One day she

stopped me, and gently lifted my arm.

 

Uncross, she said, Let your chest see.

 

from Liar (Barrow Street, 2021),

first published in Foundry

An Hour Chez Delacroix

 

Young, her skies had not

bled or bleached or broken yet,

but dead men sang a cappella

wrestling angels behind walls in 

fierce duets like

Jacob and this seraph, hand to

hand for destiny where the artist’s

hand held his palette of violence— 

 

Now in his garden a summer

 jade— stilled where

August’s petals whisper down

age and she dares to welcome it

in the artist’s  house— 

learn that silence of

struggle for her own where

Jacob and his angel fell.    

 

                       ~           

*  note: there is a small museum in Paris where Delacroix lived and worked on his painting of Jacob wrestling with the angel.

 

 

 from It Is Still Beautiful To Hear The Heart Beat, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry 

ARTEFACT

 

The only thing I have left
      of my maternal grandfather
           is a small hand-held mirror
                made of ivory.

It sits in the upstairs
     bedroom dresser drawer
             like an only child.

I have yet to see myself in it.

 

from Accelerant

SLEEPER (excerpt)

 

I’m writing this for all that I’ve lost.

Honoring my life this way is inexpensive.

It’s refusing to grieve that has cost me.

My refusal to grieve broke a man I loved.

He wept for me, even as I refused to weep.

I thought I could get away with it—

my lustrous, grief-less life.

I had a lot of support.

Now, grief fills my pages. 

​

from Pullman

three haiku

 

bitter melon—

the worst thing I’ve ever tasted

 

the raspberry bush

so hard to grow

moves to the neighbor’s yard

 

spring bouquet

a box of good chocolates

I have to forgive you

A Group of Rats Is Referred to as a Mischief

         ––Jeff Andrews LCpl   

 

Male rats are called bucks while unmated females are referred to as does and pregnant or parent females are called dams while the infants are

called kittens or pups and there’s a species of rodents indigenous to Vietnam about the size of a full-grown Boston Terrier that runs in packs and

we heard their menacing rumble under our

Quonset hut bumping the tongue and groove floorboards and when I say we I mean a squad of nine soldiers sometimes called grunts or draftees

or sometimes referred to as enlisted or as cannon fodder or comrades-in-arms or cited as departed heroes so we lowered our voices sensing that these oversized rats could hear us and attack and for

once our mouths were dry in this country of

humidity and beauty and pleading and in a while

this passel of rodents was gone but we stayed put whispering softly to each other and made a

promise not to mention our fear if we got back to

the states but of course in hindsight after all these years scattered across American towns and cities

like pack rats bushy-tailed woodrats field and

marsh rats I think we miss not being unified in our unease I think we miss being back together.

OWL

 

She birthed you, but she is so

             unknowable.

Is that the word? Try,

             nocturnal. Each night

she glides on wings silent

             as a vole quivering

under snow. Perched on your

             bedroom sill she watches

you dream-twitch, then spins

             her head to spy the snow-

mound ripple—sugary in moonlight—

             as the vole tunnels past pines.

She lifts off, silent still, and you—

             daughter of hurt and squeal—

are awake. When you sigh,

             your heart-shaped face

aches. Is that the word? Try,

              breaks, knowing when she dies

you’ll inherit all she’s swallowed

              whole yet had to leave behind.

THE DAY AFTER THE SCHOOL SHOOTING

In the park, Papa Swan leads

the way down to the water's edge,
gliding out onto the glittery surface,

the babies behind in a straight line,

Mama Swan bringing up the rear.
We waited all evening to see this,

the brood safe, protected, however
many pictures we take, how much the

radio squawks the sad news of our own.

+1.

 

Betsy Garrett signs the papers not with an X

but with a +. Interest compounding.

​

Signifying:

Cross hairs. Short hairs. Short Straw.

Candles lit both ends. Irons in the fire.

Overstock. Over-run. Overboard. Eclipse.

Pay up, fool. You'll always owe me more.

​

An extra chair set fair to the table.

A coat that'll fit you, chit, once you grow out.

Beneath still waters, ice running dark.

Skin-deep? You don't know the half.

​

More than you bargained for, or you deserve.

Baker's dozen. Lagniappe. Sugar on top.

Shake on it. Shake with it. Can't shake it off.

Fist against hand. Hand to glove.

​

Saddled with. Hitched. Held. Bound.

​

   from Held and Firmly Bound

OCEAN BIRDS

 

Jealous is the night,

the feckless night,

coming over us

as water into sea,

the forceful day's

geography turned black.

​

Your body is the sea

I float upon, your skin

becomes the waves.

Nothing will ever bring

you here to me, nothing

will ever call you back.

​

   from The End of Horses

THE PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTE 

 

The Institute doctors won’t talk
to the local police about Janey’s file, 

but they have an arrangement 

 

with the FBI. 

For security reasons. 

How language gets twisted: 

 

security, as in freedom from danger. 

How her death leads to violation 

of facts, strips a person down.

 

Stacks of documents,
life’s scaffolding. The irony 

of a diagnosis of paranoia. 

 

Janey thought the Feds were after her. 

She was right. The cops
all agree she was wacko. 

​

   from The Damage Done

ONE AFTERNOON ON ROYAL STREET

                                    After Kelly Cherry

 

You are reading Les Nègres. I am writing

To César. The sun gleams like a gold doubloon

Over the levee and the early winter bloom

Of camellias, the blue flame trembling

 

In the wall heater. Sun is blooming

With a cool flame, and you are talking

Over César and the early news. I am writing

And camellias are listening past you

 

To the voice of César blooming like a dark sun.

Your voice is a blue flame gleaming

On the pages of Les Nègres. The levees are trembling 

Winter's darkest gold. Listen: I am talking to you.

 

Carolyne Wright

from Masquerade

DO YOU STILL SING IN THE SHOWER?

​

Sometimes the craziest thing you

can do is love someone. I find my arms

are always outgrowing my sleeves. Once

I stood in the shower watching my lover

slip down the drain. When I reached

for the soap she was gone. I’m always

waiting for a woman to come around

a corner from somewhere and love me

maybe forever. This is what happens when

you live alone or don’t own a car.

You find yourself in the middle

of the street wondering why the shower

at home doesn’t work. Love is like water

you can only hold for so long.

​

E. Ethelbert Miller

CAUTIONARY TALES

​

In the woods

are these things:

​

fingers of madmen

nimble and quick

playing cat's cradle

with ropes meant for strangling

​

a great horned owl

in the treetop

the soul of a Chippewa

caught in its throat

​

a sidewinding snake

rubbing its scales

jaws unhinged

hungry for neckbones

​

quicksand, though no one

knows where exactly

​

These are stories our children tell us

to keep us from wandering.

And so this guy says to his friend

who happens to be a wheelbarrow,

​

Tell me, amigo, Don't you get tired

of being a wheelbarrow?

​

And his friend says: Hey, I'm lucky

I got to be a wheelbarrow!

​

                           *

​

Something to make you laugh,

César. Or maybe groan.

​

Yours,

Jeanette

​

from Hotel Montparnasse: Letters to César Vallejo

ARS POETICA

 

Let’s not romanticize bodies

falling. Others may use float

or dance; I refuse to pretend.

 

They were not graceful, quiet.

They fell unbelievably fast.

Straight down. Head first.

 

Some screamed. The sound

they made landing? Forget

thud. Louder than the wind.

LIONS

 

Lion taming

exists to make us think

that the ferocity of lions

is fake.

 

Or lion taming exists

to parody our sense

of human mastery

over the earth.

 

Of course,

any thought

is a shot in the dark.

 

But a poem exists

to contain it.

 

Now a thought

is a watched pot.  

Years Later, Frank O’Hara

 

I was only five

years old

and fifteen

miles away

when you

leaned against

that john door

at the

5 SPOT

 

so I came

to this poem

a little

too young

and a moment

too late

 

to do much

for her except

to listen

eyes closed

saying to myself

it’s only

a song.

RELEASE

 

Forget what I said before—

It’s evening in Tuscany.

 

Someone is making bread that will not grow stale,

others are picking carciofi.

 

The moon won’t speak one word

so covered with the moss of clouds.

 

I know someone who died, but stays.

I would live it all again.

 

Nothing is divested but the

crêpe myrtle that screams pink.

 

Nothing is enough but the

empty wastebasket where letters once were.

​

  from The Man Who Got Away

(New Academia)

PREMISE

​

That your shoes are two fish, a school that moves by the singular will. That the body is here, but elsewhere, too. That there exists a body of wind, one for you, one for the city, the country, the planet. That there’s one wind moving all of this just so. Even the bride in the white wedding gown. And the groom in the charcoal suit. The beautiful car that’s waiting for them. The vast night.

I AM BECOMING MY MOTHER

​

My mother raises rare blooms
and waters them with tea
her birth waters sang like rivers
my mother is now me

My mother had a linen dress
the colour of the sky
and stored lace and damask
tablecloths
to pull shame out of her eye.

I am becoming my mother
brown/yellow woman
fingers smelling always of onions.