Some days, I sail on an empty boat to a country I don’t know. / With my navy-blue passport, I can go anywhere.
Spring turns to summer, hopes fly high. A golden romance—in my bloody fists I smell osmanthus flowers. Under the pulped sun, lovers grow young and younger.
After the death of the dictator, his son wanted him embalmed. His son wanted him on perpetual display in a glass box.
What damage do I do? / The night avoids my eyes, so does the road. / I am never wholly myself, unto myself.
I’m writing a play about a Kommandant at Auschwitz / who recognizes one of the Jewish prisoners/ as a famous poet
Koreatown, Los Angeles
Gwendolyn Brooks stood stark naked.I stared into her bespectacled eyes.
Ms. Brooks showed me how to tend to myself by scrubbing dead skin
after Romare Bearden’s Patchwork Quilt (1969)
My back is turned from him again, but this time I’m not hunched over the quilt—his rough thumbs gripping my waist—I’m standing
a woman who doesn’t read many poems asks is poetry meant to be
This life’s so small & // Sweet as a strawberry
We watched the women play harp in // The hills of grass
for Jessica Alba & Danny Trejo
There has been so much death. So much killing. From space, the wall along the Rio Grande isn’t even a shadow of a shadow.
