Poetry

you did not make it quick. 

There was no knife to scrape my bones, 

—no knife to puncture my flesh,

It was bruises, it was blue, it was black,

It was ugly. 

My wounds sank deep, pinning me in my plot 

They twisted my insides, turned my stomach to stone.

jagged rock jutting from flesh,

Not marble—nor onyx, but coarse, unsightly grey.

The crudeness, the cruelty of my body hidden.

For I am murdered!—yet you live.

you and your brothers like you—the blameless, the named

Her veil: blush, pearl-spotted.

Lashes: heavy (fake), coming undone.

The pale gap above her eye. Rani, half-past-nineteen.

It is a Tuesday, raining. I wait with her in a much-loved family minivan.

The heat slips down my neck and her baby sister’s

Let me capture

Your likeness forever.

Look at me and

Hide your sad.

Don’t look so ugly and angry.

You will regret this.

Surface Tension

Last night I dreamt we were married, our children sprinkled through the yard

like tulips. I know you don’t believe in people creating other people, but my mother

was so hard on me; I want to make a child to wrap in cashmere, kiss

I was in the middle of teaching one afternoon when a man died right outside my classroom door.

(Big-time Spoiler Alert -- if you don’t want to know the plot, don’t read this!)

New Types of Irreducibility Criteria

Grace Hopper, 1906-1992

Seven clocks,

Disemboweled:

Poem to a Survivor 

(for Paige, for Take Back the Night)

Even if you cannot imagine it now,
Please know that

Your scattered mind
Will quiet over time, will again offer you goodness and clarity;

1. Portrait of Adolescent America

I find America tucked away

inside the lines of my hand,

searching for a safe-space

in a trench of creases /

Close my fist & watch promise

two empty bottles of Advil lying askew, another only a quarter full sits upright

an ice pack long gone warm slouches against a dirty mug

an empty pack of menthol juul pods perches on top a mound of dirty cotton pads,

smudged and smeared with mascara that was supposed to be waterproof