The town I’m from
has a history
an excommunication
of diversity
at the helm
of self-serving
Caucasian propriety.
My sister is 50 percent
black -
her ancestors once
ran towards the freedom
promised
in the small towns
like this one.
This small town -
97.4 percent white -
instead hung her ancestors
in the town square,
jeered at their attempts
to live among the same people
who were proud
to live in a land of freedom.
Only certain freedoms
are allowed, however,
in towns like this one -
only a freedom
of a certain color.

What is
depression -
a sharpening of
knives,
an impending
doom not so unfamiliar.
You stop
listening to the drumming
of the earth,
though you
only lay on the ground
night after night
in a soft worship
of the body
after plight -
your mind rages on
but your body is quiet.
Your friends move on
your sister moves on
your father moves on
everything you ever loved
moves on
without you.
You study stillness,
and illness
and wellness
and hold them
at the tips of your fingers.
You know
where to be
and why to be
and when to be
but it’s the how
that becomes
disillusionment
disappointment,
a siren,
a blade,
a way
to say goodbye.
But
if you hold on
to moments
on the train,
in the kindness
of strangers,
in the way
the sun always rises
even after the darkest,
most hollow
nights,
maybe,
just maybe,
you could on
to yourself.

Before
I never understood
why the Prince Charmings
fought for the
sleeping princesses
atop hidden
fortresses
but upon
finding you
I think
I know
what it is –
lying next to you
drinking you —
not a conquest
but a loving
confession
of arms —
you kiss me
and I am
awake.

We rounded the corner,
the Sandia Mountains glimmering like rust-colored prophets
from the passenger seat.
Far from The Flatlands,
I traced the curves
of Mother Earth with my fingers.
I imagined the way her gentle hands
could carve existence on a whim.

These summer days
I long only for a life
far from the pictures
scratched on to my arms.
Where has she been?
What has she seen?
I see her a mile
out from the shore
pulling flowers from the stream
a glitter in a dream
perpetually
she turns
the dagger in me
an answer of how
of when
the light which dazzles
and catches
what could have been.

A generation
of domesticated feminists
and jaded
data analysts
couldn’t comprehend
the way your kind
hardens
and bends to behaviors
of sinister
seasoned flavor
where is your accountability
to a higher power?
or are men made of
different material?
a high grade steel
prone to cutting
into the softness
of women
I wonder when
we will turn
our fates
into brick and mortar.

Lie on a bed of spikes,
feel it, crucified.
At last, peace,
the nails through my hands,
my legs bare to the thigh -
I was over.
Frozen, looking at those frigid hands -
they were not bleeding.
Lay on the floor by the fire,
he kind of liked me,
I learn my lesson,
I was the dead quiet crescent court.
He beckoned,
I came - breaking, hearing the dry crunch,
dead quiet.
Snow in my shoes,
I felt nothing.
I heard the clocks striking,
deathly dreaming people went somehow to bed.
I slept six hours,
weary and waiting to recover.
They will be laughing at me,
hardly white - though they are men.
I shall be sober for so long.
Why won’t I see him again?
I won’t.
I dream of banging and crashing in a high wind -
I want to know him sober.
I want to write to him -
discipline and blaze.
I shall get some sleep and do so.

What is more
fleeting than love
but safety
shelter
a home
built of solid material
a place to rest the bones
in darkness
and in light
and honey,
you are that light
built into my chest
a bountiful inside
a beautiful edifice
a commission of stars
a love no less worthy
of poetry.
Sure,
I fight
and I toil
but what is spoken word
if it is not flawed
and resistant to shaking?
In this God’s land
in this green machine
a woman’s love
is but a dark kiss
but yours is destiny
and violence
collisions of legs and sweat.
So honey
sugar baby
give me shelter
let me rest in you
I promise to be
a faithful visitor
to your shrines
and temples
and to love you
fiercely
and madly
as only a woman can.

Many have claimed
to wrap their
arms around
love
to fit it
snugly between their ribs
to sing to it
to let it circle
down the drain
to have swallowed
its hidden
heartbeats
and
any poet
with a spell book
could cast their
words on to it
but I know
love
as I have held its
bare bones
against my own
in the slumber
of my home
where it grows
upon acres of your skin
that I caress
again
and again
and again.

Underneath the palms
of eternity
somewhere in the desert
of my convictions
my heart is aching
for you
but my slate isn’t clean
without the southern
whippoorwill
of my youth
still embedded into
these streets
and spines
of my childhood.

Yet
I am only innocent
at the hands of you
reckoning time
backwards
and forwards
cutting these chains loose,
you say:
cherish this day
you aren’t living without
my love pressed up against
your mouth
that of your running kind
I am sure
that I have committed no crime:
I don’t cage you
I don’t command stillness
I only know
which way to run
with you.

So often
I wonder
what winds will touch you
tonight
what dark turn
of the earth
will show you
my pain
to leave a family
for rain
to seek out a
dim refrain
from the real
the fragile
the vain
I humbly ask
the earth
to find you
to send you back
to the shadows
from which you came.

There is something
about tonight
that reminds me
of my childhood dreams—
coming alive right
at insomnia’s peak,
sweet, naive
and daring
in the way that
they stirred awake
my reality.
Dark houses filled
with space and quiet,
suburbs in the city
that gleamed with romance—
a career and sky high
ambition.
From dreaming
quietly in the dark
to forgetting to trace
my fingertips along
my deepest desires—
but aren’t these just
the sins of woman?
Overdressed
and unseen,
sitting down
instead of
dancing under the stars,
remaining unimaginative
in our grown lives
instead of
lying awake at night
and dreaming.

I was born
backwards.

I was raised in a place
with no name
but I can still find it on a map.
The first words I wrote
as a child
were of Dorothea's
funeral procession
and the brown linoleum
on her kitchen floor.

Now I can't seem to remember
her hands.

She grew up slow,
sifting the dirt with her hands.
Time moved against her
so gently.
Dorothea wasn't scared
of the wind.

Dorothea died
two months before her 90th birthday.
I shut my eyes and smell
the rain from her front porch.

I close my eyes
to feel the open windows
of my childhood.
I remember buying ice cream
on the first day of Spring
at the cafe close by.

Why do we run from
what we know?
I want to find
all of the years
I misplaced under my fingernails.
I want to see
Dorothea standing in the kitchen.
I want to see
my mother happy.

Childhoods
lay dormant as death
but I have faith
that they find us,
eventually -
face down in the debt we owe,
dark, dim,
hungry for summer.

I believe in the reincarnation
of Dorothea
because I have found myself again
in her ghost.
I found the South
embedded in the spine
and scripture of poetry,
back porches,
pink houses,
love on an acre of bones.

I stay up late
to write myself into the arms
of an existence like the one
of Dorothea.

flowers
don’t bloom in concrete
I haven’t felt
warmth in 214 days
your eyes
tell me you remember
three years ago;
an unraveling
of flowers
the hazel
of which
reminds me
of the sunlight
on my grandmother’s
wooden floor.
your girl looks at you
in a picture on your timeline
does she see
your eyes
in the back
of her eyelids
did she ache for 423 days
without you
for your sake,
I hope she did.

For every
cigarette smoked
on your front steps.
For every
scorn and sigh
put out
by your reckless
and willful desire
to construct
temples
and virtues
on the inside
of my mind.

I put my hands
on a beauty
and she woke
up a deity.
Her ancient
hands
a simple touch was
all I needed
to free
the story
of millions.
A tale of
bravery
and of love
where only
endless flowers
could grow.

Follow
the light
to her door
run your hands
down her rocky spine
know how
the earth
feels as a stranger,
as a careful
confidante.

Oh,
the warmth
it feels right
at this angle.
Filling the
sediment
with a peculiar
kind of glow
an aftermath
of constellation
grounded firmly
in her form.

If I had known
that beauty
had existed like
her eyes
clearing cobwebs
and caverns
of my grief
I would have
found her
and danced with
her just beneath
the echoed waters
where she waited
just for me.

If I had known
of the path
leading right to
her door
I wouldn't have
waited
so long
to write this poem
just for her.

I’d rather be an empire builder
a lonely artisan
in the deserts outside
of Las Cruces
with the sunshine on my back
chasing destiny down
a steep cliff of Mesquite
and milkweed
to Mexico City
where the children smile
in the streets
and then on to the Guadalupe Mountains
where I’ll feel
the loneliness of my dreams
and make my way back
to Small Town America
where I’ll sit on the front porch
and revel in
a much simpler destiny
as you walk through the front gate
to greet me.

I am constantly asking why
and when and how
did you become
something so gravely
attached to the hands
that beckon you away from me.

you are miles away
dancing in tall buildings;
I am under the stars
crashing into freedoms
you will never understand,
untamed and breathing in.

How to put this
how to keep this
delicate
cleaning the childhood
out of mind
but keeping it
in mind
as I pull
up my shirt,
letting you feel
the scar
from my youth
and I'll be
seeing you soon,
I'll see you there
dirt
in our hair
and fireflies.

If I could have my way
we would only
grow younger
and not as strangers
to ourselves,
undoing all we know
cleaning the dust
off the shelf.
I know you better
in my chest,
girl as beacon
of light
of summers
in the past.

When you leave me
do it slowly,
keep me dark
keep me waiting.
Only the dirt
will know
what you're thinking,
as you sink
into the fever
of the season.
Mary,
lay on your back
with the tv
on
it lights up your dress
and turns your distress
into a million
colored lights.

Caught
in a small town
but you are
made up of the world
in your short skirt
and honey skin
only showing
in patches
when the sun touches
down upon
your window again.
In your old Buick,
a kaleidoscope
of summer
crashing down in
dreams
in the heat of this town.
A dream in which
I am turned around,
breathing in color
and looking for you
now.

In dreams
I am the rhythm
to the dancer
underneath her skin
In dreams
I only fight
in the river of remembrance
in her breathing
In dreams
imagining my woman
nervous, scowling
reaching for my hand
In dreams
fighting to stay
in silver clouds
above this land
In dreams
reimagining oceans
beyond this land
and endless drone
In dreams
talking backwards
riding rail lines
back to my home

I woke suddenly
in the night,
the dawn
threatening her arrival
in a brilliant
watercolor doom.
Legend says
that a sleepless night
such as this
is the result
of your presence
in another’s dream
world.
Are you dreaming of me?
You know
I would endure
a wide-eyed dawn
just to touch
your skin
in a realm
of your mind’s creation.

Lately
I’ve been closing my eyes
reimagining the hieroglyphs
of springtime
at your door
and the way the light
touched your form
but now it’s just me
and the moon
redesigning the colors
in your room
sketching rivers and lakes
into the tombs
of our love.

Tell me what you’re thinking
though I know
that it isn’t of me
but she
is still in every
night vision
every daydream
half asleep
half turned to the universe
of her design
elements of refracting memories
words
that have so long since
been my curse.

Time
has made a beggar of me
when October has
dug her nails into
the April on my mind
mouth full of planet
but chest full of wind—
she is closed to me again
her form is a mountain
when mine is just a grin
just a shadowy friend
of her own
on the ground
in the field
where our love story
would end.

I want your body to remember me
I want your eyes to cast shadows
I want your skin to unearth creation
I want your mouth to quiet storms
I want your wiles to sink ships
I want your hands to unravel time
I want your chest to relearn revelry
I want your body to remember me

It’s 1:02 p.m.
on a Wednesday
I am waiting to take a test
1:03 p.m.
and I am willing
to test my willingness
to stay here
in a town that moves
on the back
of a razorblade.
They never say
what we are waiting for
here
in the quiet
resistance
like the eye of the storm
on the softest sheets.
I have become an antique,
a collectible,
a hollow instrument
used for my city’s defense.
I have begun
to move backwards,
erasing time
in a land where
clocks don’t tick
and lights don’t blink.
Love
here
always moves like the weather –
moving
churning
spilling
breathing
forcing
uncompromising
is the love of Mother Nature.
If I had met you
before the government won
or after my mind
became a gun
I would love you
I would love you
I would love you
better.

The daughter
of a hard man
craving a rambling
softness
a rustling of
wind down south
resting on the willows
crackling to flame
when he
caught my eye
but temptation
does no good
to those dreamers
those sinners in reverse
but that fault
wasn’t his
when the devil
found his prize
captured quick
as the bullets
found their way
down my spine
as a rusted silhouette
at the gates
of your judgement
as the body of water
lapping against
where your love ends
I sit here
in the everlasting silence
waiting for the violence
of my justice.

Shy girl -
spinning, heathering at my feet.
I love you but I got to leave.
I love you and I waited
for you to speak,
but you never did.
(You never did).

In the glow
of some kind of metamorphosis;
brightly lit, gluttonous ego,
Lily came to me in a dream.
Her love
she fashioned into a blade;
I was an enigma
she cut through.
I'm such a bad girl
when I miss her,
spilling ephemera in pavements and lipstick.
I could love her
but I'm always gone.
She knows how I love to be gone -
She knows that I am a slave to freedoms
I've written for myself.

See
the summer ending
at the end of our palms
so let’s wait til tomorrow
to set all of our plans
into motion
see
the green
of the locomotives
against the track
of my small town
and they’ll speed past
when I admit
that I’ve always
had a penchant
for everything you hate
for anything as ancient
as the fears that grow
in your garden
the ones that you water
with my resolve
it’s your eyes
that wrinkle
the backs of my hands
not the time
I spent mending
the fences between us
even months after
you’re not a stranger
the lower east side
echoes with our laughter
now I have someone else
who holds me together
but no amount of wrinkles
on my skin
can separate me
from the sharp inhalation
that your presence brings
but I hesitate
when I see you wringing
your hands
on the street corner
with your friends
my darling
my baby
the lights on my nightstand
keep your ghost lit up
reminding me
of the park
at night
when you found my heart
before the veil
of dark
found it’s way
to every highway
and slow breeze
in the mountains past
the place you grew up
long before the gin
found it’s way into your cup
and now
after you
I’m shedding skin
until I’m see-through
enough for my veins
to call out your name
so you’ll know the honesty
behind the words:
“I’ll see you again.”

I like the
way the city looks
in the rain
we're sure gods
sloshing through puddles
you're holding my hand
and letting go
to things
in the sky
I hope to god
we find our raincoats
underneath
our tolerance for
**** on the next street
over
and the way
our faces
grow older
with every black
death on the
television
but
this isn't living
this isn't living,
no.
I like you
grew up on tumblr
and a father
who drank
enough to love you
you're wounded
but isn't our whole
generation
acting out our
violences
on television.
If bad luck
could talk
she would drive
me out of the city
without saying
a word.
yes
I know
I'm a coward
when it comes
to keeping my word
but I would marry
her tomorrow
If I could.
vacating the tombs
of Montrose Avenue
and ghosts of the desert
Simon & Garfunkel
on the stereo
shop windows reflecting
an aching reckoning
I like the
way the city looks
in the rain.

We light up
our Marlboros
against the wind
against the throats
of our winter coats
we grow up
by the lakeside
and endless sky
against the tresses
of the Midwest
the people here
are made of glitter
of known fortunes
but I am of the dirt
of unquenchable thirst
the road sets my fortune
of which I’m at peace
the wind should
be so lucky
to wrap its fearsome
tendrils around me
and when the night
sings to the lonesome
to the beggars
and the thieves
I’ll be there among them—
but more righteous
with my lady next to me.

On a particularly dry morning
I Google “creative writing prompts.”
“What are you eating for breakfast?”
“Have you ever dreamt
of being blasted off to outer space?”
“Have you ever encountered
a speed ******
in a Walmart parking lot?”
“Imagine you are a ghost
roaming the hallways
of the Cecil Hotel.”
“Have you ever looked at yourself
fully naked in the mirror
after a night of ugly debauchery?”
Never mind -
I suppose another love poem
wouldn’t hurt.

4 days in the suburbs
everything I utter
has the same cough
every itch
remains hidden
there is this thought
stuck in a glass jar.
these days
an image of her eyes
and 25 dollars
can make me run faster
than any automobile
but no one here runs anywhere.
what is that song
I used to listen to —
the one about stillness?
It exists here
on a slow suburban morning.

When I close
my eyes
I see the lights of Colorado Springs
and all of the hiding places
of my ghosts
in the desert.
In Omaha
along the highways of flat plains
I laid out my immeasurable gratitude
unseen to others
and quiet only to myself.
Sitting amongst the humming
insects
and faded lawn sculptures
of my hometown
I remember
the house by the roller mill
and the porch full of
conversation and burnt cigarettes.
Along the Pueblo towns
of New Mexico
I see monuments and scriptures
of a future
carved against the spines
of old love
and new testaments of freedom.
When I finally open my eyes
I am anywhere
but here.

When I finally find
myself in the dirt
say
some 52 years from now
give my lampshades
and frail autographs
to my lady
with her married scorn
and scarred hands
that have held my own.

Only in death
will I see her clearly
as the day I met her
and
in our plantation house
you can find a tin cup
a stray look and
her sentiments
I never overlooked
quite carefully put.

Her ancient beauty
quite unnerving
and her eyes
ever fearful of my demise.

In my crystal clear
version of the way things were
you'll see her letters
that I have kept
still breathing hard
and holding fast
against my chest.

For
I have never loved another
quite like her
sharp teeth and red lipstick
on my dress
and
when we were married
the whole town came to see
what true love could
really mean
to us:
as thieves
as unbelievers
in all things.

Constant sorrow will follow
America
but not her
immortal and etched
into every doorway
of the south
and inside of my body
breathing out.

So much for I have lived
to succumb
to become the dirt
she dances on
to watch for her
in every crowd
spell her name on my tongue
breathing loud
and fast inside of her love
and her blouse
that stands forever
inside of our plantation house.

Nothing is sweeter
than waking
to the silence
of snow
of the movements
your chest makes
before the closed-eye smile
stirs
the ancient Woman in me.
I crawl into your arms
like stepping
into the sunshine abyss
of my childhood
like conjuring
the music
of my sister’s laugh
like conjuring
the dead.
Some mornings
I wake
so full of love
that it takes all of my
strength
to keep my chest
from hallowing
my ribs from cracking.
At 6 a.m.
on a
snow-covered lawn
the revelation
of love
accompanies a cigarette
and cup of
watered-down coffee.
All of the words
you whisper
my porch cowboy
are stuck to me
on a morning
so unaware
of its own
beauty.

We drove for 17 hours
straight
through crooked roads
of pine
dust
mountain
I called
for a higher power
to release
the tired
from my palms;
your hand on mine
reliving a happiness
I was after
you: a crooked
straight
line
falling asleep
somewhere outside
Richmond, Virginia;
my parents:
now two straight
crooked lines
descending now
from one another,
a home broken,
my mother
with her palms clenched;
I asked
if we would fall now
to the same fate
and you told me
your palms
would always be open;
I relived a new childhood
one with you
behind every tree;
I set my gaze to home.

Is it with
the strength
of my own two hands
that I crush
the bountiful
flowering petals
waiting
in the outstretched palms
of the women
who I love?
Does my towering
ambition
silently decay
their humanity—
their desire to reach
for anything beyond
my hips?
Tell me—
is there a way
to unclench
my fists
from around your lungs?
A way for my riotous
echo to be silenced?
Even if a cure
existed
for this malady
I’m not sure
that I would ever
stick around to see it.

I have known many ways
of birds
and unseen ghosts.
When I walk
it is always against the wind.
7 hours talking
to you in the dark
only to realize
you had left long ago,
tucked your longing
into the shadows.
Inventions of you
carved into walls,
quietly,
because that's the only way
I know how to love.
Girls I lay with
are only figments
of an imagination I write out of my pens.
Every moment spent
with you girl
was a light on the darkest night,
but now I must return to myself -
the way I was when my body was made.
Only Christ can know
the pain I'm in,
my girl she will raise her chin,
forget.
Meanwhile,
I,
conscious shadow seeker,
will be looking up
for reincarnation.

what a fickle
flawed
fabled
a creature:
the woman
the wild
dark
apparition
in the corner.
what a fickle
thing
is love:
we hunt
we carve
we hunger
our mouths water
for a touch
of love
but when it sits
on our dinner plate
it eats
us:
a reckoning
of blood and guts.
It is only in the dark
that we are
fickle
flawed
fabled
with our stomachs
empty,
leaving love
untouched.

It was the likeness of her
replaced
with maps
forests
shine
cold sheets in summer
vanilla ice cream
sunlight on wooden floors
flight of fairies
childhood unearthed
a generous heart and lungs
a magic of my own.
When I finally dreamt
without her
it was
renewing.

Snow in Brooklyn
is quiet
still enough
to hear
the heartbeat of my city
the drumming
of which
keeps me awake
on warmer nights
but in the cold
every ghost
is wrapped around
the air
turning circles
the color
of your hair.

This morning I awoke
the rain was screaming
across her windowpane
and I grieved.
She warned me once
with all of her November
in the summer
she would never love me
the way I need.
Where will you go
with all of your spare change
funny names
for the way you felt?
Will you find someone
to stand still with?
Will you keep bits of me
tucked into your sleeve?
A girl unlike me
unknowing of maps
and crosses in the ground.
I want to be the girl
always gone
the girl turning tables
one foot in Carolina
and the other standing next to you.
But instead
I am the quiet girl with a dream
a pen in pocket
and a penchant for danger
rearranging the way I know the earth.
You're lost on the way
to my house
but you know the way
you know the way.

Midnight
somewhere out West
a death sentence
a tightening of the chest
a girl
hurled
into the void.

Springsteen
said everything
dead could be reborn
with the open road
I wonder if the same
could be said
of my soul.

Slow and dew
dripping from the leaves;
waking up with sunlight
on white sheets.
Lovers will come
to you as different colors,
some yellow and some so blue
you fit yourself inside an ocean
just to know them better.
Drown your body
in the tide of crisp bedroom covers;
drink the dew from the leaves -
this is summer in the suburbs.

It is
that time of year
again
when the rain
laps gently
against the seasons
when your eyes
are bright—
if there is a God
she is there
in the thunder
righteous
unforgiving
ebbing against
our throats—
children of the earth
it is now
the time of year again
to dream.

I will light
a cigarette on a sunny morning,
musing about my own mortality.
And you
still child,
will roam about the earth
unknowing of the venom spreading.
They
will try to put out the light,
sixteen years of grass-playing
stomach-laughing,
beautiful caress of the Earth
felt wholly by myself.
There is no doubt
that when you leave,
I will follow along
wherever you lead.

Many have wondered
how those who do not worship
the dead
can find serenity
and a savior
in the inanimate
but I believe
that the remnants of passion
of earnest devotion
can be found
in the abandoned housing projects
on Detroit’s East Side
or on the wooden crosses
that line rustbelt interstates
the spirit of this land
and its people
can be found
in what they leave behind.

on the gallows pole
at the turn of
the womanhood
of resistance  
I am naked
with my sins
but not
to the touch
white men
will be devoured
outwitted
unflavored
by my kind

because of the government
we know evil
because of the government
my people
rise from the ashes
of our pain
our grief
out of sleep
and into a riotous
rebellion
of soft skin
and hard fingernails
of women
who were never held back
but silenced
of women who were never held up
but let down
we will be the ones
to remind The Man
that we have been here
all along—
as prophets
as keepers
as an articulation
of the people
we refuse
to
keep quiet.

The glow of the party
reflected in your eyes,
the way you smiled
at me in the passenger seat—
you did it all
with such ease.
Every night
my bedroom is filled
with the unearthly wiles
of you—
the keeper
of all my future plans,
of the beautiful endings
to each night.
Now I know
I’m gonna be alright
I’m gonna be alright
I’m gonna be alright.

The witches and waitresses
of the Appalachians
follow only one
God.
I have seen her on occasion
carving midnight embers
from her spine
illuminating a divine magic
found only
in the season
of the Gemini.
She hunts by moonlight
chasing the sweetest
perfume of the mountains
indulging in the whims
of the lilacs.
In my dreams
she spins
with the moon
dancing circles
‘round my room.
The dirt of which woman
is made
will be sifted
in the hands
of the Appalachian
Woman God.
And in my sleep
I witness
the creation
of Wild Woman -
a divine prophet
setting the countryside
ablaze
in a rebellion
of foxfire.

Read the obituaries
for breakfast
and watch the flicker
of the television stars
every night now
tell ***** jokes
to your pillowcase
become a legend
to the funny
and the sad
tell me
what it is again
that keeps us young
keeps us looking
up.