selected
Poetry
I found myself a figure here. A woman in my image, peeled from me.
There were only a handful of forms this figure could take—apparition, cover singer, yaya, Ate, layer on of hands, a palliative, oracle, party girl, bruha or body projected, hair woven with the demands of other bodies, their pleasures virtual, bound up in a conditioned response to a swaying palm.
When she moves a slow hand, I do too. Her outline shakes and makes a sound, the way a tongue
is loosened on the island.
Your sugar spoons are numbered
Are you armed?
The Crocodile with his crocodiles is waiting for you
and he knows your name.
Enumerating The Differences Between This And What Ails You is your name.
The Meatlady has made her way down. She knows
what's in you.
Leaving Weak Shorn Ferns is.
Like Heads That Have Been Burned is.
To test the tongue of the balance
there's a knife, a lesser deity,
animal masks
to make bloodless the new black.
Heavy Feather Review
no one has dipped her actual hands into industrial sanitizer and screamed
no one has splashed hot oil on her parts and been looked at by the cook.
looked at good.
all anyone wants is to be at a pine-soaked lake
with their soft gleaming legs.
Oh Paula, Oh Lettie at least you admit it,
Oh Ada.
Ada is my unborn child.
Ada is a wretched beast.
Ada has a face like an anesthetic, voice like a dropped air conditioner.
Her favorite song is “Let Me Down Easy.”
Ada will never once let anyone down easy.