Studies from Childhood

What’s the secret word.
            What’s the secret word.

Hived

lost it in
the spin

in the spine
the body

not waving but drowning

the throat relaxes.        water flows to the lungs.

whereabouts unknown

of one burning branch in some wild brush
     flapping its carmine leaves.

Nadeem

Hours on the balcony
are progress, compass
pointed to no fixed place,
always correct.

One Hour

I see the top of the hill just in reach but I can’t make it.

Zoosk Online Dating for Her

Thighs parted within 50 miles. Hair swept up within 25 miles.

The Argument

In a Kafkan poetics, the father lacks a temporal sense of the world.

A Primer

a counter-privation

What emojis choose for this

dateline cruise of Arctic

Sun and Moon

His happiness is my relief, his sadness
my undoing.

Shock

Celtic honeymoons are of stone.  No one gets in or out.

Resurrection Ship

our crystalline symmetry / embodied

Door as Point of Contention

What fears may take our shape.

Evolutionary Exit Strategy

strictly gendered coloration
courts
strictly gendered coloration

an excerpt from land of eroded womb

what is that you want to inhabit this gravity.

Don't Wait for the Translation

a big Fuck You to prudence

Super Tuesday

I and the country leave February limping

You Grow Accustomed

Here on this continent / you consider the proverbial

Always Finish What You Start

because he wanted to make films, whereas
films for me were one part of all of creative life

I was trying to imbibe

Feh

hold a dull color and therefore a light

Green Thought

slowed your existence

Man Matching Description

             Some injuries are serious
and some not serious enough

At the Checkout of Val's Pet Supply

the essential purple, less primary
than the same old sky we walked beneath,

From Palisades

information     not difficult to explain     but logistically necessary and thus made vague

[new] Ways to Honour the Dead

on my way home I list the carcasses I find:

Cane Harvest / La Romana, 1918

cutlasses strike the charred cane in concert

Defer / Differ

all late and incomplete

Late April at Virginia Avenue and D Street, SW

a population records a population

Is that the goal and is the

What if dark means no tree. 

Body Double

I was the empty aquarium recycling its own water. 

From o’ to be young black & gifted

No lie, I  had to speak to the DA

Holding a book of physics essays

Thinking yo, I can’t catch another case

from IRL

                         In this
way the world of ambiguity
has its hospitable cont-
inents But the days Owl
onward.  

What It Means to be Avant-Garde

if you kill time time kills you right back 

Delete to Receive

rolling through the space that remains of a not-so-distant cloud on the verge of maxing out, filled with variations of ordinary sunsets and faces too intimate for deletion,

Visitation

I couldn’t name by taxonomy

Elegy to the Year of the Wood Sheep

like an eye fading on a severed head

Advice to the Love Worn

You too have learned to bake

Unfortunate omissions

Into an admirable lie

Different Drum

There are many ways


To repeat yourself


This is not one of them

Physical Education

this is how boys like me play

We Don't Talk Much

but what’s Taíno look like         these days? 

diaspora of ancient-now(s)

you remember/ me as bold & wild with a cavity of laughter

Untitled

the part of the collective
​unconsciousness you can access

Trusting the Voice

at times a scream at times breathlessness

After the Beginning, the End

The right selfie outlasts
the self.

Clear Signal, Outerspace

Yes, we'd been sent here to die, but the flesh
of fish had never been sweeter

Look At What I'm Looking At

It’s a violent thing      to be alive

Electrostatic Ocean, Friday Night

in the back seat / of your blue
beetle submerged

Wish Me Luck

Could be luck’s the
River Jordan of fiction

When We Eat the Marrow

The room is brighter / than me, conspicuously so

Polity

Improbable fingers bear skyward

moonmilk

if i allow for all means of ruin

tracing lake superior

that night my navel became an easel,
became its own front yard

Field Recording

vocoders and color guards
and fiberglass tubas

Millenial Slut

Isn’t she so much more beautiful when she’s crying

Dreams of Being Human

The Mischiefs
Head Scratchers
Tall Dudes
Blood Tide

We'll Probably Talk Before You Get This

A membrane continues / with various openings.

Rue'd

until memory’s opposite

Untrust (Me)

I thought about an unlamented red

An Owner's Manual

out-love time, press
one ear against the door of a stranded
elevator.

Specimens of Dynamics

Two proofs that brutes cannot abstract
A source of bullets

Representative

O mutable
program, borders atremble

Take Me to the Wondries

Us a couple of untucked cowbots

How to Award Fit Punishments

The marsh. The basic puttering. The eyewitnesses
percolated in the minds to reveal the existence

Midge

The midge, the bleed around the edge.

Grips

Under the archway

they can see she’s gone

Consumed

so my bones are liquid in sleep

Cravings

(the way bones
often do)

The Stockhausen Handshake

entrapment or caution?

puberty(1)

everyone is naked do i know
what my body is planning

from Arabesques I-XX

Nobody can agree what

to do with the creature because

nobody can agree what to call it. 

Condolence

The lights serve no purpose
anymore.  They’re just bright.

Democracy

in one (1) movie the woman -
           tied to a cell toilet -
     is fucked by six (6) pretend policemen.

Dallas

 private necessity
beats eating around the bush.

Girl Says, That Happens to Women Too

I attempt to draw a line down myself
where my being black and woman
begin, end, spiral

UN-

yet and still the churches burn

from Small Paintings

attempting a feeling of loss

Forgetting Is the Ghost that Keeps You Alive

These days it’s always something

Karl's Boys

Power is then falling asleep in a chair
And everyone sleeping in chairs
While the bed stays freshly made.

Luz

This is not kaddish
This is not rain on shabbat
This is elsewhere

Loss

how long ago
did her skin
start to slip

Cicatrices

we pretend marks are clear
skin stories

Translations from the Occitan

The others were severe forms of travel

Woody Guthrie

tall gladiolas shout their red 
flaw into the mist

June 12

true the setting is provincial but
the families don’t feel small

June 15

word is deed and only so few chances