Poems

Poem for My Body

No one else rescued me. Not my father

or my brother or, years later, the gentle man

who became my husband. Not my mother

or my best friend or any of the women

who listened to me tell my story

Dog Boy

ONE

Late at night in Oklahoma, a very small, an extremely small man ran across the road in front of my friend’s car. He does not doubt this is real, though the rest of us do, and it doesn’…

Ella Josephine Campbell

Slim, slight. Sinew and bird bones.

Cords of her hands like spruce roots.

Came from Ship Cove to Crow Gulch

with little more than the child inside her,

landed in a small shack flanked by

So, we’ll go no more a roving

So, we’ll go no more a roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

Re: Happiness, in pursuit thereof

            It is 2005, just before landfall.

Here I am, a labyrinth, and I am a mess.

With the Dying of the Light

I recited to him,

                      Now as I was young and easy,

and in the cough-afflicted wheeze that was left of my father’s voice,

Family Reunions

The other people quit their stone fields to come here.

They slip in from nights that even the snow abandons.

They leave ashes in their glasses

Buen Esqueleto

Life is short & I tell this to mis hijas.

Life is short & I show them how to talk

to police without opening the door, how

to leave the social security number blank

Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought 

On Identity

it’s hard to feel power from my ancestors when i don’t know 

who they are, 

where they come from, 

what their stories are

we share blood

blood shares memory 

How to Tell If a Poem Is Trans or Not

Look directly at the crotch

Gently wave away all

thoughts about how

you never cared about crotches of poems

before this poet

Consider the subject

Dear Diaspora Child

it's okay if you only learned about your culture from Google

it's okay if you only read your language at the public library

Introduction to the Songs of Innocence

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

The Raincoat

When the doctor suggested surgery

and a brace for all my youngest years,

my parents scrambled to take me

to massage therapy, deep tissue work,

osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

The Colonel

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried

a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went   

out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the

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

Invitation to Love

Come when the nights are bright with stars

Or when the moon is mellow;

Come when the sun his golden bars

Drops on the hay-field yellow.

Come in the twilight soft and gray,

Dream Jobs

Random Link Clicker.

Royal Bath Taker.

Receiver of Foot Rubs and Praise.

Aquarium

The fish are drifting calmly in their tank

between the green reeds, lit by a white glow

that passes for the sun. Blindly, the blank

glass that holds them in displays their slow

Question:

What do they think about you,

the people who pass you on the street?

What would you like them to see?

They see the druggie, the whore, the junkie.

Tinderbox

We were a conflagration asking

to be incarnated into the world.

Mother, superstitious, kept us

apart, two stones of the same

igneous anger.

Everyone saucered tears

Wolf Lake

It was down that road he brought me, still

in the trunk of his car. I won’t say it felt right,

but it did feel expected. The way you…

Saskatchewan Indians Were Dancing

60s pulled us from starvation into government jobs

antiquated Indians in Saskatchewan danced for rain

Manitoba Indian doings were hidden for a jealous

Vancouver Lights

About me the night        moonless           wimples the mountains

wraps ocean      land    …

Chinese Chimes: Nine Detours of the Yellow River

you are unaware of your obscure sources

but you are explicitly sure of the vast sea

as your final destination

The Clouds are Buffalo Limping Towards Jesus

"weeping                 blooms

Underworld Lit

XIV

Please print clearly and remember your name.

1) The river of fire, in ancient Greek thanatopography, feeds into the river of _____________.

kitchenette building

Where did the handsome beloved go?

Where did the handsome beloved go?

I wonder, where did that tall, shapely cypress tree go?

He spread his light among us like a candle.

Where did he go? So strange, where did he go without me?

Great Intimacy

It is like an exquisite spider web, this world, but I

don't get trapped.

I have ceased to tie the strings of one shoe to

another in the morning,

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs 

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; 

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice, 

If Stone Dreams

We cannot know this statue, this satyr 

with his head propped on a wineskin; 

we cannot know if he dreams. In fact, 

A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General

His Grace! impossible! what dead!

Of old age too, and in his bed!

And could that mighty warrior fall?

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring —

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens,…

the ghosts of women once girls

somewhere a little girl is reading aloud

in the middle of a dirt road. she smiles

at the sound of her own voice escaping

the spine of a book. she feeds on her hunger

Sonnet XVIII: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

Homage to the Mineral of the Onion (I)

In the onion, there’s

something of fire. That fire known as

Fog. The onion is the way

Sometimes a Voice (1)

Sometimes a voice — have you heard this? —

wants not to be voice any longer, wants something

whispering between the words, some