When a bolt of lightning falls in love
with an old woman, sex is reinvented
as the world’s first toaster oven.
When lightning falls in love with a middle-
aged woman, lightning gives
birth to an electric guitar. …
Read More
Features
PREFACE
WhateverWordsworth: Dear Reader is the Poet. The poet is above all a reader. Poetry is nothing more than hysterical citation. A love affair with the bust I’m drawing in college: I’ve made too soft the edges, and my teacher …
Read More
I.
My madrina and I right away got a truckload of watermelons from a neighboring rancho, to keep us hydrated for the two months we’d be working. We—me being a twelve-year-old boy but strong like a freaking tiger homie, she …
Read More
Asleep in Japan in the 13th Century
Yume no yo no utsutsunariseba ikani semu sameyuku hodo o mateba koso are If this world is only a reflection of a dream what can I do but wait until I …
Read More
The Black Ugly Duckling
So, in first grade in a school
where I was one in three of Black
kids in the whole goddamn school,
my teacher (let’s call her Mrs. Snow)
decided her class was going to put…
Love Poem with Parenthetical
I
Shadow branches rise through our bedroom window
It’s garbage day Tuesday We hear squeaky wheels
a blue jay lifting from the sky the small sighs of waking
We’ve unplugged the clock and can’t …
Poetry
The Visitation of God; The Leaf Blower among the Swimming Pool Lights; Egg; & In Praise of Disquiet
In Praise of Disquiet
The years are fine with dust that settles in the eyes.
The stars are bound to gods from abandoned temples.
By night you fear the abdication of the sun.
By day you wear the light …
Poetry
[the tree remembers]; [here the contours]; [don’t change your name]; [and so mother]; [the space of a length of time]; & [here’s where the source of origins], translated from the French by Nancy Naomi Carlson
Translated from the French by Nancy Naomi Carlson
[the tree remembers]
the tree remembers
this legend
a grave
a cross
and a cloud of silence
since
l’arbre se souvient
de cette légende
une tombe
une croix…
I have probably failed as a father, thinks Marshall, as he pumps gas and watches through the windshield as his daughter sucks on a cigarette while apparently thinking herself out of sight.
How did she get so good at …
Read More
