Endnote
Dear child, I feel as if I only learned the stolen ways of silence, the trickle of a stream near frozen, I only learned that boiling water seals the deeply broken bones that cascade in open rebellion against the sworn shape of a body. The
Category Archives: Poetry
Kissing Him at the Clown Mouth
She was running out of reality quick. She was kissing him at the clown mouth—the entrance to a funhouse they’d put upside-down by accident. So she had to step over his eyes, step over his jagged teeth. Had to enter under the tongue, like a
Language
My mother is a tornado tearing into floorboards with the undulated strength of her tongue, she rips apart excuses with words that echo across our history and the blame is neatly designated – my stupidity, my ignorance – why can’t you be a proper Burmese
Why I was Married by a Non-Affiliated Priest
The black print of Ephesians 6 commands wives: Submit. Women are notified: dainty vertebrae can’t build crucifixes. Onion-skin papers concede neither feminism nor fear. I’ve begged God with a cracking throat why can’t I just be happy? Teenagers kiss behind pews with communion wafers shoved
What the Body Knows
How to flee / or at least how to want to / how to thrum with silent shame / secret iconoclast hacking a red grimace / through Thanksgiving dinner / with people who love you / what do they know / gorgeous table wrought in
Mètis Breakfast
Pipe tobacco rolled in bank receipts Smoked smooth from dirt to peat With each sip of french pressed And honeyed coffee. My body Is a bog. I wanted to quit This winter. Two restless dogs Banjo and Fiddle jig their feet Even in sleep. Rising
Forgiveness Season
When the green Sierra figs have fully digested the tiny wasps that burrow in their backs through a pinched hole losing their wings on the way so all that’s left is to desiccate among the pink jammy acids. A season for telling our preteens that
Baby Face
The woman evaluating my honesty at the liquor store looks at my face as it was five years ago and then at the face I am wearing now and then at the small plastic rectangle in her hands and she examines the date written upon
A Seat at the Trickster’s Table
I arrived hungry to the feast invitation clutched in hand, but something seems off— there are only tricksters around this table. I can’t look too closely at the center offering in case I recognize the face. It’s a well-kept secret but even the most respectable
I Can Hear You
Poem for the dead I can hear the stream, the generator shutting off, and the white dogs barking. I can hear my footsteps on the dirt road shaded from moonlight by the tended forest. I can hear fog sliding over the hilltops and pooling, lit