Potpourri • 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.
We 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.
abundance, 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.
If Memory Could Speak a Language • Delicate Freedom
The frangipani’s last falling flower makes its way to a graveyard on the passing-by shroud?
Empire a Call Away
Started telling my grandmother / I love her. Loudly, daily, over video calls with / my mother, my mother holding / the phone.
Bloodlines
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
The 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.
like [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.
Old 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.
Hallway Song
First I wake the body / to unring a bell— / as the proctor rolls up I slam down right on the tit / of the sexy mermaid we sculpted / in the sand pit.
Art in the space of social issues
