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 …

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 …

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 …