Poetry

they say—wetback      they say—beaner        they say—cockroach
or you open mouth     for feeding & tears     fall under calloused tongue.

O you signals spinning round the
world with our secrets in tow,
what lies below, what pleasures
go, what torn bits show?

Even her
birthday song is martial.  Even
her avenues are lined with
pikes.  Even her galleries
crowded on Sunday, her parks
larded with pigeons and crumbs.

a heady scent, breeze born
rises from
the lay of fallen leaves
crushed beneath the foot of man
decompose

within the crisscrossed limb, scratch
a path on boulders entombed

We leave our families and your dead
name at the shore. Or, they come with us
and we’ll tread water.

Tomorrow we’ll row our steady skiff along
the shore, explore the margins of our years
until we find the point that thrusts so deeply
out to sea it seems we’ve left the land
behind.

Pink in the sky! Lit by a rising sun.
Framed in bared branches’ tentacles,
reaching up to touch soft, cotton-candy-
colored fluffs.

You’re not using your good fortune,
think of your sisters’ mental diseases—
of Syria, Jerusalem, seething,
You should be doing more, the inner voice nags.