Polaroid: Prison Visit poems
Here, lens flare recalls the burn holes in her nightgown.
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ReadThe Ad Hoc Cartography of Nightmares
The problem with draining the world from your head / is what rushes in to take its place. -
Read“Self-portrait skinning twenty-three auks” and other poems
A little rasp in its throat whittled the exhaling air. The auk laid down at last / and stayed there, its breath / so quiet I didn’t know when / it gave way to a greater quiet. -
ReadThe First Otter and the Moon
I would like to tell you about my mother’s erratic heart, or share what I know of Las Patronas -
Readin this poem my sister doesn’t die
so i keep renewing her favorite book / on our shared library card. -
ReadProximities
What are we as humans surrounded by — do we choose to surround ourselves with — and how do we situate ourselves within language? -
ReadPotpourri • When I Worked at a Dry Cleaners I Wore Gloves
A man I didn’t love / died today—a growth / in his colon’s fragile spiral. -
ReadWe Discover a Thing Called Growth • The Death of this River
They make border out of moving body / and announce that it is dying / and that Mexico owes the U.S. water / but not from our wet backs. -
Readabundance, abundance • maybe trying to rest means no more escaping
I am dirt, bruised by lake light. white rain, mauve / clouds, the sky’s breath leaking. -
ReadIf Memory Could Speak a Language • Delicate Freedom
The frangipani’s last falling flower makes its way to a graveyard on the passing-by shroud? -
ReadEmpire a Call Away
Started telling my grandmother / I love her. Loudly, daily, over video calls with / my mother, my mother holding / the phone. -
ReadBloodlines
it’s 1906 / my great grandfather Sam lays tefillin / for the last time then leaves / them on the bedside table, / a loosening; the leather straps / left to dangle -
ReadThe Granary
This past November, I was a visitor in a house with many presences: a mouse in the ceiling, ladybug colonies in the doorframe, accumulations and whispers in the hollow of the wall. -
Readlike [my] mother, like me
If the bath is a womb, the shower is a river, a rain. Distance between droplets makes a better clean, not deep, but a clearing. -
ReadOld Friends Let Things Go
In December, Karen and her family left the murky skies of Philadelphia behind and touched down at LAX on a breathtakingly warm and sunny day.