Poetry

           with a phrase from Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” a name is a noose that won’t let you be.my full name was once woven from threefibers, a cord of three that i dare to breakinto two knots on a tongue. please excuse,foreman, my Hebrew. Yirmeyahu means Godis high. it’s why i love the tower from distance.O- …

grandma unfolds her dress, & 1967 patternsinto life, its story mapped in provinces, infamilies splayed naked on a dusking weave. The dressis handsewn, seaming bound by restitching. Lilac & rhubarbthreads haphazard & layer threefold along the waistlike fingers of smoke. Mesmerizing, because a dying fireis a spectacle. The dress of a hometown documentingevery small violence. …

It is winter butthe poets are still coming.I once lived in atown where there were no poetsor children. The treeswere made of salt. When the windshook, nothing happenedbut daylight. There were no handssince there was nothing to take.

a golden shovel / after Against Me! All I ever wanted to be—the summerdaydreamed of. Girl in the floral-print dress& endless golden fields. I just wanted youto future me, when so many people wantme past-tensed. I know I can’t convince themI deserve survival. A future togrow up into. I know that they can’t seea girl’s …

At the sentencing, a snake of painroiled inside her veins. She did notfaint or scream, or sink to the white tilethe way Alma did. She stuck her fingerin the ripped hole of her pocket’slining, she felt the inside of the woolcoat, the nowhere of material,that black hole of seam and stitch.She saw his face, blank, …

Better takeout was thriving in DeKalb County,but the school system hadn’t caught up,its languages unable to support the Greek bakery,dim-sum parlors, or lox-and-bagel shops.We knew the Roman Empire went beyond Italyand Pizza Hut was not quite Italian,but we had to distinguish Latin partiesfrom the French, Spanish, and German.Latin drew the kids who would opt for …

We tie our sisters’ red ribbons around our heads and wear the garlands of the spent cartridges as ammo. On our shoulders, we carry the rhododendron branches as rifles fitted with letter openers for bayonets. Some bring rotten potatoes to hurl as hand grenades. Because the forest is booby-trapped, we play at school. All the …

The world encouraged me to completemy doctorate in shamelessness. “You’ll hurtto not be part of all this interfaceand commerce,” I was warned, thoughas soon as I declined I was rewardedwith a loneliness so pure that my earscould not be found by bothersome words,and my blood felt fed only by the airand the light that lives …

Anyone who makes tasty food has to be a good person, because think of all the love that goes into cooking:salt and pepper, sprinkle a little extra cheese, and pop open a bottle of Syrah, or if we’re eating at my parents’ in Las Vegas,we’re drinking Tsingtao beer, my father’s favorite, and he adds more …

At a bar, a man says Love the hair, says it’sthe best hair, baby. I’m Republican but would totally go liberal for you.At a gas station, a man’s Damn girl, those titsknocks me into the pump and I, too, canbe machine. Shudder. Waiting for use. Tick. Queue.*When I was young, in our basement, where Africahung …