The Devil knew exactly where to go. There were plenty of places in the world where the sun slanted long across plaza stones and shone like diamonds in the spray of fountains.

I grow daffodils now, try to reimagine / night and pretend that doors are / simple.

Beauty also is unaccounted for. / The mist is merely what it is: water

before their war, the Aqlla served / overflowing quinoa milk / to unworthy undeserving grins

When I get to heaven I will be bruised / and I will not answer any of God’s questions.

i know you’re thinking of me: it’s just about to rain.

For once, the crickets were not faulty hinges. They carried their tune.

an exercise in mining the worst possibilities from the ridges / of the brain absent of stalagmitic reach

And yet: my work is labor the way love is labor, is liability, is constant risk assessment.

I grew up immune to the ordinary, surrounded by a past / I was expected to sit on and memorize

We leave our offerings. We prepare the meat the way / we were taught, snap the wing, relish the song of crack

Reading my grandfather’s notebooks, I’m trying to / know madness as a way of searching.

When my mother left for the man with a cruel son, I kept / my nails sharp for when he would draw back, swing. I left

“atmospheric river” they say, as if we are children, / as if air was water, as if all was just one phase change away

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