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 …
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Letter of Recommendation
I am writing on behalf of the wind in my son’s hair,
which, at least in this photograph, is always there for him,
always cooling his cheeks and suggesting new scents
from over yon dale, …
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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 …
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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, …
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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 …
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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 …
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Sticky Note to the Moon
What a dust bunny you are in space.
America hacked into you, put a flag on your face.
You are not the sun, duh.
You white twisty tie on a bagged day.
You …
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The Murmuring Grief of the Americas
You are on the ground, wrapped in a ratty blanket at the edge of the cage. The interpreter wedges her way into the corner. She sits on her knees, brings her head to …
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