Poems

An Innocent Little Girl

The little girl is innocent

they’ve put henna on her hands

they’ve plaited her hair beautifully

they’ve put kohl round her eyes

they’ve dyed her eyebrows

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

The Day Lady Died

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

The Powwow at the End of the World

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam   

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Light Shining out of Darkness

God moves in a mysterious way,

His wonders to perform;

He plants his footsteps in the sea,

How Prayer Works

Tucked away in our tiny bedroom so near each other

the edge of my prayer rug covered the edge of his, my

brother and I prayed. We were 18 and 11 maybe, or 19

and 12. He was back from college where he built his own

My Papa’s Waltz

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Holy Ghost

We had no paper

then, or we had

no pen, or no words. How

to say it. We had

no voice. No listeners.

Just deaf night

Family History

Only the beginning is true.

There was an island

and an orphanage

and a boy.

There was a train and a country

to cross.

Turtle Island Poem Number Fourteen

once i left turtle island and i

rejoined la and doubleU and see

to savai‘i on a hunting trip

on the fairy from upolu

la picked up a day trick

blew him during lunch

Newfoundland Sealing Disaster

Sent to the ice after white coats,

rough outfit slung on coiled rope belts,

they stooped to the slaughter: gaffed pups,

From Summer Grass

The willows are thinking again about thickness,

slowness, lizard skin on hot rock,

and day by day this imaging transforms them

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

kitchenette building

Let’s Not Get It Together

The world has become corrupted

from our hearts

to the way our gods love us

as if they know they’re already dying

and they’re determined to drag us down with them

Planet Earth

It has to be loved the way a laundress loves her linens,

the way she moves her hands caressing the fine muslins

knowing their warp and woof,

like a lover coaxing, or a mother praising.

K was supposed to come with the key, I was

K was supposed to come with the key, I was

to wait outside the gate. I arrived on time,

the time we had agreed on and waited, as agreed,

sturgeon

i twist and gasp

open and close my mouth

searching for air

whenever a sturgeon is caught in the rainy river

i know

the feel of strange hands touching my body

the struggle

to be free

If Our Bodies Could Rust, We Would Be Falling Apart

the law mandates that a hate crime only be classified as such if there

is ample evidence to show that one’s actions were motivated by

prejudice toward an individual’s nationality, ethnicity, sexuality,

gender, etc.

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Too Negative

I was a kid other kids’ 

parents gossiped about.

They told their children

what I was: too negative.

I get it. Fair to fear

contagion of bad attitudes,

When I was Fair and Young

When I was fair and young, then favor graced me.

Of many was I sought their mistress for to be.

But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore:

Dear Death,

Am I a praise poet or a blame poet?

Today I am a blame poet.

 O Death, face it, existence

doesn’t like you.

You can’t sing. You can’t paint.

Bicycle Eclogue

   That red bicycle left in an alley near the Ponte Vecchio,
I claim; I claim its elongated shadow, ship crested on
stacked crates; I claim the sour-mouth Arno and the stone
arch bending sunlight on vanished medieval fairs;

The Clouds are Buffalo Limping Towards Jesus

"weeping                 blooms

Eight

The trick to building houses was making sure 

they didn’t taste good. The ocean’s culinary taste 

was growing more sophisticated and occasionally 

You can’t be an NDN person in today’s world

You can't be an NDN person in today's world

and write a nature poem. I swore to myself I would never write a nature

poem. Let's be clear, I hate nature — hate its guts

What Do You Believe In?

Do you believe in the ghosts of aunties and uncles that drive old sin-

gle-bench pickup trucks spotted with bullet-hole rust, sweetgrass and

Sonnet XV: When I Consider everything that Grows

When I consider everything that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows

I’ve Dreamt of You So Often

I've dreamt of you so often that you become unreal.

Is there still time to reach this living body and to kiss on its mouth the birth of

the voice so dear to me?

Cocteau Twins

I’ve heard the phrase between you

and me too many times to believe

it to be true, but between me and you

Boy Remembers in the Field

What if the sun comes out

And the new furrows do not look smeared?

This is April, and the sumach candles

Flaxman

We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,

Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,

And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought

Leonardo DiCaprio

My ex-boyfriend got measurably more attractive

and all I got was a dad bod.

Leonardo DiCaprio has a dad bod,

and for whatever reason this is reassuring to me.

Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar

Lake Baptiste Ungenders Me

upon contact / head first / baptismal

the rind of me / peels into ribbons

of foam / and pearls / i re-brown at the water’s

touch / its two-way mudmirror / hands me

its own name / earthliquid / bottomless

Poems for Saints

Blousy Guitar

Blousy guitar   I don’t want to count the beats   Hey Hey

My pen     I have bed hair in the best way    Daughter

of sunlight and air     and I’m glad you were born

TREATY 8

queen of great britain and ireland, by her commissioners the

honourable david laird, of winnipeg, manitoba, indian com