Category: Poetry

i refused to waste the brand new life i made tamarra / understood not to push you on me kept her back turned / while she rocked you so i didn’t get used to your look or / your smile or register you squinted the way i squint

This house retains its pleasant ghosts— / in the spare bedroom, faint leaves / on the wall, under the pale pistachio paint.

What is gravity in the middle of a black ocean, / in waves and wind and violent under pull.

a wooden ladder drifts up // through the straying branches. Time / slowed down by the quiet almost

a tongue is a hallway for asking—there is a right way to respond, a nearing of ends spelled / meticulous at a testing

I’m thinking about Dave Robinette throwing Budweiser bottles / at those big fellows in the Baltimore biker bar when Barbara / walks by and says she wishes I were her little boy and her husband

Poor boy, poor the girl / I was, neither really wanted to— / But the drinking in the room was boring, we were hard-thinking / bodies, and swimming was out of the question.

I thought nothing of ripping out a page / from the little blue spiral-bound notebook / my husband keeps on the coffee table— / until I saw the imprints of previous words / he'd written in his usual capital letters