Transition Dreams Cab to train to plane to bus—– Where am I?  Where? Here is a house but the rooms keep changing. Here all is familiar—– the school, the mall, the ceremonies, the stadium. What have I missed or is it all the session of mid & I just need rewinding? Traveling, strangers traveling, & all that […]

Self-Portrait With Writing a Poem I used to know what a poem is. And the scream of peacocks used to know me. And what does that mean? Here’s another bird: the snowy egret  stands one-legged and silent  in flowing creek water, and neither water nor egret knows the difference. My own sharp beak spears old […]

Arrogate There aretwo waysto makeit work swimin goldfrom LAto Dubai swimin bloodin Seattlein New Yorkagain, in LA either waythe end resultis the sameand whetheryou geta headstoneain’t upto you * * * The Emperor The chair is not anythingthe chair has never been—a bitsprung, threadbare, thinnerthan it was. Yet still it is wherehe sits, against the […]

Landscape with Tree To be the worst makes someone very special. Imagine the worst crook, the worst drunk and the worst enemy. They’re all special in their own right. And the worst             art history student? I looked at every painting like it was a Rorschach test for hysteria or depression. Logic kills imagination. I studied […]

Unfinished Exit  I keep thinking  about the time in high school  when you drew  me  a map of the city,  I still have it somewhere.  It was so easy  to get lost  in a place where all the trees  look the same.  And now  every time I see  a missing person’s poster  stapled to a […]

COYOTE TRUTHS Beauty What is it like, I ask Coyote, to wander in fields of lupine and poppies that dot the dry fields, to never walk a straight line and yet brush against glory? All day I starve and all night I roam, Coyote says. Beauty is to wander through an unwoven fence. Fear What […]

bitter coffee so she’s standing there—  in vaulted two-storey morning light Bratz Doll Angel engulfed by  Redemption coffee shop’s bustling glory ass as tight as a peach the contour of her muscled thighsshowcased by a definite size six boot-cut black yoga pants draped over platform Docs topped with a brightly-colored cap-sleeve and she’s me  with […]

Cantata some laughed, some wept,most stayed silent.i must hold my posture,face the onlookers with steady eyes.many hide behind their newspapers,a few pull out handkerchiefs.i lock my stance, toes gripping the ground.a boy with a black bag stares, unblinking—i almost dropped the bird.from my chest / a crimson bird emerges / we are told not to […]