Category: Poetry

No point threatening us: we will not stay away from the boarded shack and its mice, splinters, / loose nails, oily dust in our clothes and mouths

lord god the big big man in the sky big big man of our one / room shack nailed & hammered out of dead gods daddy / felled himself / to fasten a roof as sky stars made of light bulbs

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