Que Significa
I thought it’ d be cooler, here,
in late June, but all night I’m kicking off the sheets
and pulling them back over my body in the stillness
of my room, until I remember, suddenly,
those …
Que Significa
I thought it’ d be cooler, here,
in late June, but all night I’m kicking off the sheets
and pulling them back over my body in the stillness
of my room, until I remember, suddenly,
those …
Now vs. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
Tonight, my mother leaves a voicemail asking I work back-of-house when I can. I haven’t had a parent call afraid for my safety since 9/11.
Close to where …
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Hans Christian Andersen
Feared Being Buried Alive
I, too, Hans Christian,
once left a warning note. Your bedside
table’s scribble read, I only appear
to be dead—an effort to ward off
the would-be pallbearers
who ’d drop …
Lakota Grammar
I.
This is what the language teaches, waúnspemakhiye:
Do not be ashamed that you misunderstood possessives.
That you were not a thing to be taken and torn, but a verb:
Winyan, “I am a woman.”
R U ok?! (8/3/2019)
Checking in. Let me know you’re not anywhere near Cielo Vista Mall, please. Active shooter in the area. Just heard about the shooting in El Paso. You guys all ok? I just read there was …
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Brigadista in Retirement
Every nation teaches itself the myths
of its survival. Fantasy, harnessed,
feeds the impulse to die for la patria,
and then the war is over. In the after-
glow of dizzying celebration, a purpling
sky
[an excerpt from Spectra]
To speak without vulnerability you claimed
impossible
the land’s fragrance its honey its plants
translation I wanted to be back in my language
“back”? /
I wanted to differently be in
another word for being…
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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. …
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Phantom Limb
after Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”
The truth is, let’s say, that the tin soldier did not fall in love
with the paper-doll ballerina. He fell in love with his missing limb.
Let’s hold …