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They had never seen these neighbors. Whoever lived on the far side of the wooded area were strangers to them. There was no occasion for the husband and the wife to drive on West Crescent Drive, which wasn’t easily accessible from the cul-...

At first among certain shadows 
you felt forbidden to ask whose they were.

I once believed in heavenly clarity—
do you know how good it feels to sing
of certainty, the wild apricot

Metrophobia
I, too dislike it, or at least I find
too much of it bromidic and unrhymed,

The plane landed in Fort Lauderdale and Dick and Royce (Royal) were picked up by a pretty young woman wearing a tank top, shorts, and silver antlers and driven to Hertz. Royal’s brother Brandt arranged such things—or his secretary Jacki did...

Above me in the night
My unknown neighbors walk 
Across a creaking floor

Finding out the truth about beekeeping and locally made honey.

As soon as I began to ask questions, I realized how much work had gone into no longer asking them, into silences or re-​routings, into omissions, not-​noticings—​into a carefully pruned rhetoric of absence. When I began to realize I wanted...

John, you asked me what it was like to be black,
to come from a place where being black mattered.