Economies of Harm

The form asks for / my job. Stay-at-home-parent, / a response given by the dozen, / lands wrong these months.

I / am ruined / how could I / ever leave / this wound

house become island, as inland pushes out / land. Outlandish, you say, this push and pull—

In 1996, the year my mother died of a heroin overdose, Purdue Pharma started to sell OxyContin in the United States.

— or the ketchup packet one / over in the adjacent deli, the dearth of good strawberries / in produce.

Elsewhere a bell rings /medieval in its calling and here / I fumble for a reliquary

Quail rise in ruffles from the sage. / Pebbles I scraped into my knee look / like they belong there.

so let’s talk then about unruliness / how it defies the joys of order & everything / that’s missed.

Every morning the sparrows sing / Every day there is another funeral

I am not. Two weeks or more since a call. To be in America, / You must see American, close your eyes and dream American

The week the pandemic hits, I break my lease in Little Haiti and drive fifteen hours up the I-95 to be with my parents.

I was being led by something. So tender and raw inside of my body that I can’t point to a specific place — there was me before I had ever seen a dam.

Do you have an elderly parent who has fallen victim to internet conspiracy theories?

Humza went to school with me in Kohat. We were always competing with each other for the first position in class.

You are younger than her labor for [redacted aircraft manufacturing company].

“taken-Black” …girl, too umber for proper / amber alert. Black / girl, skipped right past “missing” into / “Lost: B L A C K girl”. nobody / even noticed