CHIAROSCURO

-

Your hand and its physical touch
fuschia as you brush

The inside
of desire and nothing

I'll say it
on the skin of your tongue

Name and unname
your eyes and their

sour

i wanted
in the way
that want follows

bedraggled
a half moon
of bites

it starts
like this
slowly

rara saw
FIRE FIRE
in my eyes

hard to describe
to you who
no longer

The first time I went rock climbing, I lasted 30 minutes.

On Shaving my Legs for the First Time

the offending hairs that sprout from dark skin
like unwelcome ants that toil through the night

hairs that signal virility on my father’s chin
draw taunts

an immigrant love letter

this is a love letter

     to jasmine rice     and soy sauce     in the ethnic aisle     to the crisp

     melting     of duck skin in my mouth     you taste     the

I smile now, waiting, always waiting, for you to reappear and remember me ...

The holidays loom and I’ve got two weeks off work. Last Christmas was pretty quiet. Not much family left. Karen was the one with the big family. I enjoy the church service in the morning. The kids

My wife and I are in pretty deep with the Mac. You can tell because we call them "the Mac."

I WRITE PANIC

into the locked kitchen
cabinet, china chipped
& sticky. i write
myself into a bottle
of vodka, sloshing
in waves of bitter
padded tongue.
i write the morning
green &

I once let the person I loved prick my ribcage with a needle a thousand times so I wouldn’t forget. A collection of dots arcing messily into two black brackets.

crying boyfriend

feels like me and god are fighting
they don’t want me to do anything

getting my period at midnight
my poems are like prayers

god doesn’t want me to stop learning
maybe i

Describing Feminine Energy

I am electric-orange.
I am strong legs running
through a poppy field, two arms
thrown open, both feet meeting
soil, moon-face turned up to
the sun, with lips like

Wait Here

Though sometimes the present clutches,
panoramic scattered, in gigantic ways,
we wonder about “its persistent fluttering.” 
Later, far-reaching, bark phone in the wind dawn
that

immediately I thought, “Oh shit! They got Kanye!” 

Lee and Aiko made a deal; one last trip together. They could make it feel like the end of something, if that’s what it was going to be.

                       words to describe love

saw a pretty plant through a store window
                                                                    picked out a different one instead
that

THE FORGE

we’re speaking by the heat of the
forge, perspiring, charlie grasping
the end of my steel rod with gloved
hands, i pounding metal atop the
metal shop anvil with a sledge ham
-mer.

It was clear she had been here from the smell of wind in the room.

I am writing you now from a city we scored with nomadic walking fourteen months ago. During that trip I had been ill. 

One night of nothing

When the languorous motion of bats and owls overthrows the scorching August air
making a party only takes three

One night of nothing
heavy      on an empty

There were no ornaments for the tree but there was beer.

Dan disowned my sister and me via email a year ago

In this dappled language, like a woods painted by Neil Welliver, in and out of our attention, animals wander in the camouflage. They are highlighted by our attention: each stands in a yellow bar of

for M

   i.
In the beginning there was only the girl
and the ocean. Someone was telling a story; 

in the story a girl’s friend died, an accident, 
so she walked into the sea, breathed

I grew up in the predominantly all-white neighborhood of Warwick, Rhode Island; I was one of only two Black kids in my elementary, junior high, and high schools. I dressed well, presented myself well, got good grades.

My friends and I would see you on the streets and say you looked like a villain. Slicked back black hair, tall and thin, distrusting gaze, but handsome. All sinister swagger.