catechism taught me my body, fit me in my un-Sundayed dress. saffron & myrrh the shape of this liturgy:

The poem lies on the white page, an arrangement of bare sticks and bright stones, riven and ribboned by their own histories.

Let it be said Ama was the last Himalayan beekeeper.

carcinomas slumber under the unkind nurses' tongues

carcinomas slumber under the unkind nurses' tongues

it tastes like my own tongue salt and flesh

the bottom of the ocean could well be the place for the body's eternal sleep

Yesterday, I handed all my poems to my publisher. I feel like I handed him my head

hair a natural satellite his hands a gentle orbit

By what do I feel she is a woman rat

I've wanted to ask for a long time: what is is like for you on      that side of the war?

i am in front of a mirror. and by that i mean i am the cattle egret in the yellow dumpster and i am also a passenger in a black minivan looking at the cattle egret in the yellow dumpster.

Not an optimist. I lie awake at night and say the name of everyone on the block and for three blocks over

when I speak, slowly, I want the universe to listen.

I am interested in frightening you. I do not want to be alone anymore.

You go outside and the Trees don't know You're Black.

He called me. He did what he was supposed to do.

One Thanksgiving Day Priscilla Ford got into her Lincoln Continental

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Spark of dry grass, Russian thistle in flames, or butterflies bobbing as if pulled by unseen strings                      through the alleyway.

come we know the water the rain waits for us

There is a special tension within ekphrasis between our urge to describe an artwork by its own terms and the urge to reveal how the artwork subjectively affects us. In other words, there is a push and...

We are in the shop. The perfect functional beverage should have zero sugar or sugar alternatives.

people ask me                      ask people who look like me                   look like anything but the blankness of a page

where is the line between a good tip and a messiah complex?

my father glides over & you let him steal your bright flag of fur

I know it’s October because I wear shoes without socks. The air is good to me & I sweat less through my shirts.

And the worst was discovering the fig trees in the city—their leaves die and dry at first contact with the cold.

a sphere of lightgrief     bodydust    and a wish

I want to go freely of so many pouches of what-ifs and later-ons to stumble in the bardo, losing what must be lost

On the subject of assurance I should have I should have

When judgment comes, ain't nowhere to run. April snow is how time disciplines its children.

It is my mother's turn in the box she is alive she is dead

The month is February and that means nothing because winter in Tampa is

lessons in methodology, how to pluck each detailed monument to her private suffering from its noxious and stifling stem.

The boy's brown fingers hold tight to your emblem, leave wet impressions on your chest.

The cars line up in the night's waiting room, and it's another hour before I get out of the car

until you realize no one else cares about the new Mission Impossible movie. It’s safe to walk alone at night.

through the computer screen           a loud                     bang           a bomb           a fist perhaps

In the absence of anything else, my own breathing became obscene.

“Why were poets the first to be rounded up, punished, and purged?” my friend asked.

Even though it seems unlikely that I see myself in their lines, I do,

I'm so sacred the only thing left is the altar

under a rising moon,       we step along a ridge of white sand—

September is a time to feel the light, write, scratch out, write, nap, walk, begin again.

Rebecca Hawkes “why suck the strap” why look at a sunset. why listen to your favourite song. why stop to smell the flowers. come on now – Tumblr user @bloodpups To live ethically in the present moment...