Poetry
What does a broken daughter become Burrowed through her chrysalis? I rage, consume my chrysalis— Narrow like a birth canal, translucent. The hallway, a birth canal, translucent Into the kitchen where my mother isn’t. In the kitchen, my mother isn’t happy. My wings are black. I landed on the fruit. My heart black, I cannot […]
The fireworks shut their mouths & the moon rises red & ripe We hardly believe it at first that bright dinner plate pushing its shoulder above the water line winking at us through the trees Your eyes preen awe from between my teeth […]
—your college boyfriend’s wife How do I put it: I fucked your husband when we were both matches dragging across a surface too smooth to catch— I fucked your husband in sulfurous air. It’s not fair, I know, to think about fucking your husband when I see a picture of you three— you and him […]
Two years after my grandfather’s death, we gather in the cemetery !50!to burn. Not even five feet tall, my grandfather made his living as a traveling bra salesman !50!until the genocide. On the day of his death, I snotted and sobbed my way through my college a cappella concert !50!even though he was, in effect, […]
after Stevie Edwards’ poem “Sadness Workshop” Your queerness needs to be more visible. Right now, men like you are nowhere on TV, so we need you to throw a shoe at Eminem or Howard Stern or any politician. And then make out with a man. And a woman. Or anybody, really. We need you to […]
There will be boys with long hair— blond boys, bunned boys, boys whose heads I kiss that coat my lips with grease. There will be bartender boys, bass-hooking boys, painters and plumbers and buttoned-up botany boys. Grocers and gas-guzzlers and boys who boast an absent gag reflex. Transatlantic boys who will feed me scoops of […]
She – I know it’s a she – we know each other, this poor thing I stand over, this bulbous beached breast, tentacles stripped so she lost her sting and she lost what made her free. Not lost, but stolen like words she’s forbidden to sing. She lies here, dormant as waves wash around her, […]
!50!a Virginia Woolf found poem: The Waves My mother knits moths in the evening. Those insects grow pale and full like white flowers and set on me—a pursuit. I am hems, pinafores, socks and hard eyes in the grass. I am still. A child I desire one thing: to love.