Thousand
For R.C.
At the market we’d bought a pomegranate,
weighed its cheeks in rubies for luck.
I set my knife to halve it, kneeling in the grass
between...
Instructions on Surviving Genocide
In the study of comparative
trauma, it is important to ask
how much have you suffered,
and is it enough? Hello, are you still
breathing? No, this is...
In Summer
He uses your full first name
right from the start, and you let him
because neither of you intends to stay:
he'll go home and so will...
Social Distancing
When social distancing, how far:
the mirage of others, ombre of their vanishing points
like—and only like—a hem stained dark,
dementing the spectrum with evanescent egg wash,...
Mass Quarantine as Aquarium
Before everything shut down, we took a walk
through the fish, immune
inside their walls. ...
Anthropomobscene
...quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher.
Terre des Hommes
Accommodation. Once we’d learned to spell it,
found a pleasant sphere for an extended...
Spiders on the Hancock
Steady at their webs on the brilliant edge, Chicago
spiders range outside the windows
across the 94th floor, at every vantage
their dedicated tensile silks arrayed
upon the...
We Have Permission
We can swim here—
only fish and shells
to glide with, a full
alternate below-world.
A single language
where breath and tears
are invisible, muted darkness
making us all blind.
There is...
The First Morning of Quarantine
we are standing feet apart between thorny rose vines, some
potted sapling trees. A child, unaware the rules, breathes in,
chokes out, weaving too close to...
Slight of Hand
I’ve come for you, cushion-soft
instead of being wrapped, we’re loose salt
and spray / solid and shadow at once
a frame brightens lime when one of...
The Last Days
In the last days, we press our dirty bodies together
A new kind of prayer—and I am asking you
To be honest with me,
I am asking...