Poetry – Page 3 – swamp pink

[orange]

Comparing apples to oranges— that’s why our codeword became [orange]. ∴ Apples are straight but we never used [apple]. (The logic is tenuous, I know.) The waiter holds a pair of tired fire-tongs & his scuttle hanging lower than usual. (The soot smells different from soot-bul—yet I crave bulgogi still.) He roams, looking for dead...

[Polaroid of]

the biggest crowd you have ever seen, row of eyes of trees, squiggle face, no oxygen, gravity gravitas marshall law grounds for the taking. Peanut shells, carbonation, one lane, another, what a well-placed hug can do. An allergy is an allergy regardless of X, the math of it, the expanse. When I am...

Why Do We Set The Table?

At what temperature does blood begin to boil? Thicken into a roux, slip between bits of basil, minced garlic, orecchiette; Permeate chunks of spicy kielbasa, bind a dash of salt, pepper, bubbles roiling forth, then dissipating, heat lowered to a hush; Congeal from the shock of cool clay dishes as a small mound is delicately...

At Home in a Mined Body

(Bop after Afaa Michael Weaver) I want to feel at home in my body To feel alive—immune to the constraints To love, embrace my reflection, repel dimmed light, yelling from the shadows, free-tuned to the melody of my skin and the song of my aura I want the queer calm in the center of my...

Herida / Herencia

Hay memorias I will nunca remember because they are tuyas. Como como you got the shrapnel scars que me enseñaste en tus rodillas. You pointed to them, puckered en tu piel. Balas, you said, and I nodded, sin comprender. I hope to never feel a bullet peel flesh from kneecap. My sin was nacer en...

Sunday Cruise

November 23, 2021

A man in a Chicano Batman shirt drove his 1972 Chevy Camaro down Beach Blvd. Sunday was the best day for cruising. It was the beginning of spring. There was still a slight chill in the air, but it was better than frigid winter. As the man in a Chicano Batman shirt approached the ocean...

In My Afterlife, I Am Brightest

November 23, 2021

after “Untitled (Chauffeur Funeral),” by Daisy Patton Golden cellophane bows on wreaths, floral vines transgress the casket’s ivory satin lining. The floor, a jade-colored rug, covered in bouquets. Purple palms form a triangle framing the dead. After life, there is this: proximity of black lace, a sheer lavender curtain’s ruffle. My spirit rising as rambling...

when a black girl-child sees death for the first time

November 23, 2021

what do you do when a black girl-child (& for now s/he is a black girl-child) sees death for the first time in the middle of your math class? when she becomes a pomegranate, tender & violent & bursting, a baby bird, a calf already full of blood & this worst knowing. your fifth-grade class...

Another (Damn) Crow Poem

November 23, 2021

Once the leaves abandon the tree, the crows, who seem to sense the loneliness of a limb, rise up like musical notes syncopated by the brisk winter wind. In one swift descent, the roost glides down with such rhythm, the elm seems to welcome them with the outstretched arms of an old familiar friend. I...

Ode to the Backyard Bumblebee

November 23, 2021

the bumblebee parades among the snap pea blossoms like a penny-sized bear with wings, mining for riches every flower head offers. flowers whose nectar becomes a sacrifice without warning. my niece & i watch with obsession, crisscrossed on the brick patio—the floor which bakes our brown legs like sweet potatoes in summer. i see the...

A Boy Ago Visits His Shadow

November 23, 2021

After Lucie Brock-Broido No whipped pistol. No two-inch signature on your scalp two weeks into February. No metal potential. No skull dent, flapped skin. No masked hand willing ruin. No blood-black shirt in the two-block walk back home. No safe walls. Beds to become inescapable islands. No hospital staple gun to your right temple, three...

Sentence

November 23, 2021

Offender M—each inmate in the prison was to be addressed by the title—turned to me, but I lost how long his sentence was in either the drone of the Coke machine behind us, or the head-high A/C unit in this meeting room, the only one cooled on the campus—this was right after we went through...