“I rented a video from Facets. It sounds interesting.” When Selena shared this with her partner, Ry replied, “Another porno?” Selena had been bringing home lots of “interesting” videos …
Officially—according to the Nassau County Medical Examiner—officially, we were both dead. When we boarded the plane in LaGuardia, we had been in caskets. What an incredible idea, our …
Sixty years now the town of Centralia has been burning. Some folks say it’ll take two hundred years more to burn itself through. The maze of coal mines underneath us caught fire and there’s …
When it thaws the worms will move again, I said, among new rocks. They will work the soil into lace until the rains lift them to the grass, where the birds will part their beaks and bow down to them. …
At the time of my commission, I did not know all the things this man would do, which means I did not know federal troops would be ordered into the cities, that water cannons would be fired, that …
If I show you an image of a bird flying, you might think freedom, or graceful, or wings. You might remember your mother pointing to the sky, naming the bird starling, heron, crow. But all of that is …
we take turns / taking pains / on the days we stomach together. / you’re in / prime / puking condition / after a bloody-nippled marathon. / idols are made / in amniotic fluid, clay / and tough …
The air - was Close - the Pane - slid High - / The Sill Imbued with Dust - Gave Up / A Maple Wing - of Brussels Lace - / A Tachnid or a Horse - Fly -
A LINE BREAK IS A LOVELY THING SEE IT'S NOT EXACTLY A PERIOD OR A COMMA IT'S KIND OF LIKE A HALF-BREATH OR A MOMENTARY PAUSE OR THE "MA" BETWEEN YOUR CLAPS OR A KNEE LENGTH DRESS I MEAN A LINE BREAK …
When my mind plucked me / abruptly from earth and gently // laid me in abstraction, time went and saw / the world.
My sons are already / crawling, crawling / over the rug where / we used to lie / talking, talking / about our days / and day in the ab- / stract—
THE FIGHTING CONTINUES // as daily 30 corpses / continue life performing the same / highwire act // Long-established toponymy / today it’s known by heart / that Tecoluca and San José las Flores / …
Though I’m precious not all my thoughts are // of my own hand. So with my father’s hand / writing I acquired imagination in small caps. // My letters bubbled up the page in many large // …
& then the erotic self begun. The pink parts shut-up in the eternal & the jealous. Obsidian unfurls its wet petals. Composure divine, as a crown of snakes’ synchronized uncoiling witnesses the male …
One after another, they descend a jacob's ladder rising from the smoke machine smog holding banana-gold pythons draped over their shoulders. They hold these slaves like an atlas. Men are held down …
I don't want to go home. / Crumbled bricks, pamphlets // stained with salt. Mother's / street, black-tarred, whistling, // whistling.
Riverweeds trace our elemental body / while the ones we love, the faultless ones, spin records in the warehouse / where we sleep. I ring my bell in darkness—
At the eastern edge of the City of David archaeological site in Jerusalem, a staircase drops into a cave where the naturally pulsing Gihon Spring burbles up from a bedrock crack. The water runs into …
Among the many significant collections of poetry that plunked into the roiling depths of 2020 was Lucille Clifton’s How to Carry Water: Selected Poems, put out by the late Clifton’s longtime …
The logical conclusion of Despentes’ argument that femininity is equivalent to the art of servility is that a society of women made to worship femininity would have the most servile women. This may …