Poetry

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.

The wings deceive. They do not spread
and thinly slice the air. They rest limp,
almost useless. Dragonfly shape without its dignity.

Digging in dregs of trash
to find the bird my father needed
to get well, I tore a vanishing 
line across the length of my palm.