Explore Poems

the sac
itself wasclear      
        and I cleaned itlike a window
and in the windowsaw my baby
our baby[birdlike  
mouth opennasalarea still    
oversizedlike a beak]eye’s aperture blue-black    
head thrownbackand twisted beginning  
to separateneck brok
en in the contractions’violencetwo arms
two legstailbone translucent... [whatcolor is
the baby?]silent heart [sac contains“chorionic cavity”]
with utmost tendernessI...

snow brings restraint
and takes you by the arm:
snow’s religious, morals over
the landscape, relaxes
with…

Before you
There was none so high
Minded,
So elegantly eloquent.
You were high standing
Fruit.
The …

No wrought iron bars like the door at my Aunt Cherry’s house
on the East Side, her husband Ben always…

The young man says, “Alan can 
do anything he wants”

“Not fly,” I say

The young man returns 
a puzzled look…

I’m here
             to tell you 
                             an old story. 
                             This
Appears to be
                 my work.
                                I live
                                in the world,
Walk
         the streets…

The Realization of a Negro's Ambition requires melatonin & the soft dying body of a monkey face orchid.

The brilliant strangeness of watching everyone not you grow comfortable with themselves.

Trying to rehabilitate one or multiple racists.

Learning death does not fear you.

I...

From within my bodily singularity
I play at sending out gentle sunbeams.
I don't believe in myself, but…

Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell…

When relatives came from out of town,
we would drive down to Blackbottom,
drive slowly down the congested…

Within, without the cosmos wide am I;
In joyful sweep I loose forth and draw back all.
A birthless, deathless…

was, according to Virgil, always a fickle, unstable thing. Woman. Wyf. Merger of wife and man. To indicate: not-girl. Not-yet-claimed, not-yet weeping. And aren’t they often weeping? The mother, tearing her hair out, running toward the battle lines, filling heaven...

Hush thee and sleep, little one, 
     The feathers on thy board sway to and fro; 
The shadows reach far downward…

Lonely, open, vast and free,
The dark’ning desert lies;
The wind sweeps o’er it fiercely,
And the yellow…

For ages long, my people have been
     Dwellers in this land;
For ages viewed these mountains,
     Loved these…

I can remember my father bringing home spruce gum.
He worked in the woods and filled his pockets
with …

I don’t like being photographed. When we kissed
at a wedding, the night grew long and luminous.
You unhooked my bra. A photograph
passes for proof, Sontag says, that a given thing
has happened. Or you leaned back to watch
as I eased the straps...

Sad is the man who is asked for a story
and can’t come up with one.

His five-year-old son waits in his lap.
Not the same story, Baba. A new one.
The man rubs his chin, scratches his ear.

In a room full of books...

I want to begin this poem with two stories:
1. In 1984, my mother was pulled over for speeding in a rural, still unnamed village in Taishan. The cop was a forty-year-old man who let her go because of her age...