Poetry
These poems are taken from The Saltwater Letters, my forthcoming volume chiefly made up of poem-letters to friends, family, and fellow writers. This book-to-be began a number of years ago with a letter to the late Lucille Clifton, then several others coming in quick succession. Then, as I indicate in “Lost Letter to Yusef Komunyakaa,” »
Poetry
“Everybody I love / is dead or wants to be.”
Poetry
A Day of It He’d put on a pot of beansand leave them to simmerthen rake a pile of leavesfrom her old flower bedsand get a smolder started.He’d cut a plug of Brown Muleand tuck it in his cheekthen lean on the rake,shifting the pile now and thento let air to the fire,arranging the sparksand »
Poetry
But I always had a bit of an authenticity complex,plus, D the waitress whispers, that’s not real Brown’s.and when my town has built an empiric tourism industryaround “authenticity”—something they stole to begin with—it’s hard to smell the stakes through mouthfuls of fake blood.Even Brown’s changed ownership recently and began renovation. I do wish to do »
Poetry
I. refrain: “And what about that blue house? Are youhiding any souls over there?”-St. Mary and an archangel interrogate the demonrefrain: “goddamn dreamers” –Jim Jones
Poetry
That Black joy real loudwhen it come from the other sideof benign neglect.A rebellious affirmation so beautifulyou can’t help but be takenin by the dark.Can’t help but give into a resounding amenblaring through the speakersof a candy-painted ‘lac,a heaven-hued DeVille.Ain’t no ignoring this peace.Ain’t no taming this revelry.Ain’t no turning down this song.All you can »
Poetry
I seeped out of a middle-passage wound, a continental Africandescendent of the un-took. Immigrant,in search of lost lineage. I dove into the AtlanticIts unending Blackness—turbulent & queer.
Poetry
Yesterday, Sunday, February 7, I was working at a coworking spot here in Durham. My wonderful friends and colleagues at my teaching job got me a subscription to this place for my fiftieth because my amazing mother-in-law lost her housing to a developer and has moved in with us, and my former office (where I »
Poetry
“I run towards the woods like a young girl in love” I run towards the woods like a young girl in lovethe ground crisp with frost my breathexultant and whiteI spent the night before praying in an empty fieldstalks of cotton reaching towards dark skyclouded with rain and thunder I wakein early dawn dress drenched head clangingwith a familiar ache and there »
Poetry
Do you remember flirting at the fish counter on Thursdays? At the Buford Highway Farmers Market—dark corners, concrete floors, & flags winking in an industrial breeze. 2 Their bread aisle, which wrapped horizons, tender clouds of challah, kaiser, croissants; rambutan in the produce section, large custard pies, & a seafood market—perpetually wet with a salt-brine stink, »
Poetry
Our parents stayed during the civil war.Don’t say we escaped, just that we too failed.We left Beirut on the verge of collapse& revolution. That clearing of hope,where would we be without it? Ask Ziad,who put the city on a stage & laughedat its slow ways of killing us with pillsor memory. So many of us »
Poetry
Magnolia mothers, owl eyed girls,fellow forget-me-nots, let’s gather our God-gowns down the golden gallows. We made it to the foreverfantasy where I can’t remember what war we were weaponing to win: For some secretary sex? Some back-handed brother? Some sons & uncles & Grandfatherswho forget we have a heart-dream? An ox-blood song? A maiden name? »