after fiona apple

i've waited many years— i didn’t know i was waiting— my myself waited til no one was looking, and it ran, and it ran and— 

all my selves run from me. when i look up they’re

Mama says mad freezes your face, so little girls with feelings be careful. Anger shows ugly over time, lines between your brows or pulling down the corners of your mouth. Girls should smile, say

On Sunday morning, at eight central in middle Tennessee, I watch the Grand Prix. This season is the 70th anniversary of the FIA Formula One World Championship, which feels like enough of a reason to

This is the Santa crushing it on Etsy.

This is the Santa denied unemployment.

This is the Santa whose Zoom background brought his therapist to tears.

This Santa doesn’t give a shit—he’s a

First, I visited my father’s house. After I returned home, my mother asked me to bring her there in the dark of night. We got on the highway, drove north, then took the second exit, but that was all I

She lives with her mom

two states away

and I wish this was all

I've failed to teach her. 

I’m now constructing a mental pool for how long these two can keep up the corporate veneer before they go insane or at least pop Gene in the teeth or at least say Okay you’re done no more pineapple and then whisk away the tray of pineapple Mom and I have not stopped noshing and ogling and noshing...

rsvp

for sacha

you’re a bound cloud
mist locked down    skipped
across the lake, I can tell

I woosh your eye’s pallet
missing calls      flatten
hunger      a slow drawl
boy  with

1955

Nothing is earned unless something is lost. You lost your father in a car accident, as mommy explained. You are less than a year old and don’t have language for anything, much less grief. The

Luxury

This September the cool
air has come quickly
and I’m in love with how
it crawls into my belly,
smooths its long creases
on the bones of my esophagus.
What a luxury — to feel
   

daughter

Her mother sometimes talks in her sleep
while she, so it’s told, whimpers or stretches.
Her brother twitches restlessly through the night.
He’s got finer hair and stronger teeth,
their

When Michael left for the West, I experienced what in Portuguese is known as saudade, an intense nostalgia for a person.

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 ...

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

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

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!” 

                       words to describe love

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

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.

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

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.