Genre: Poetry

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 …

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…

Happiness Is Very Hard (Is It)

If pain secretly visits and sleeps over
In a zigzagging night 
The body, like a habit-driven curve,
Will become bitter and stiff at the right time
Or it will try to lie flat …

Soon after he came home to Arkansas,
mother’s cousin Larry became a stone on a hill.
She tells of the monkey leashed

and taught to ride his shoulder
as he walked the couple blocks to Main
when they were young, …

It’s        Like This     I Told the Archangel

                                                                     who can’t swim—

crazy     crowded     under great waters

two hours from shore and so misleading   dull vast gray    not even blue if you 

look from the boat   a great nothing really      except …

Xī’ān Nocturne with Jasmine and Pears

I call my mother to tell her about a rare dream
in the first language:

               the fruit vendor’s miniature green pears 
               the soft juice I crave

               she pays but gets the wrong …