No Cares Liza
Repair the divine highway to L.A. / when it hurts to stay. When it hurts to go, / do a little dance to keep from leaving.
Baffler Archives: Poems
Columns
All That Is Including Me
Our bodies presented themselves as allegories / to untangle. Then rain blurred the forest.
The Scrim
The country conspires every morning to seem the morning news. / People don’t watch other people work. Work is broken.
Watching Over
This land I watch over / is a place with old stories / and plant medicine. / It is earth a mountain lion walks . . .
Further Notes on the New Reconstruction
From the kitchens where the gas is kept / beloved are the blues shining my shoulder / old potholes . . .
[You’re supposed to thank the fumes. To be grateful]
You’re supposed to thank the fumes. To be grateful / for the toxic patch on the rail track.
The Protagonists
At one time, / I asked for everything— / When I saw how my love was squandered, / I would secrete venom.
Chayote
Like other gourds / chayote has a sprawling habit / and should only be planted if / there is plenty of room in the / garden.
Late Style
They pile the barley in stacks and the unspoken halves / are greater. The season is an ongoing industry now . . .
Abbreviation of August
The period hasn’t been invented yet.
Scribes in Greece went back the
opposite direction reaching the end
as a tiller would at the end of each
furrow, weaving across the tablet
until it or the thought was used up.
Poems referred in all directions.
What caused us to stop. ...
American Sonnet For My Past And Future Assassin
It feels sadder when a black person says Nigga
Because it sounds like Nigger. It feels sadder
When a brother or sister says Nigga because
It sounds like Nigger. I have never heard either
Word in the mouth of my mother or father.
Once I had a lover who said neither word
Out loud. ...
American Sonnet For My Past And Future Assassin
When walking hope is a swagger
When sleeping hope is a lullaby
When breathing hope is oxygen
When drunk hope is liquor
When dirty hope is water
When unfilled hope is a well
When unwell hope is medicine
When impatient hope is patience
When lonely hope is company
When poor hope is ...