Poetry

Famously late, light reaches us
eons past its own extinction,

Vendors approaching men with
women, holding out a solo rose, long-stemmed

Early mystery,
out of what century

The lithograph hangs
immaculate, while the chest
beneath it gleams.

Quartal voicings, the alcohols. 
Swallows in a martini sky, jigsawed

the hive swells outside
as its residents itch to lick our inner walls 

for moisture and respite 

I am the man in the play-
ground, the cord of his earbuds

clenched in his teeth
(bit in a horse’s mouth)

if this city is still breaking me  
in with its weather and tethered eye

you be the arch in my neck 
the mane growing from it 

I moved into the haunted house
and gutted it to the bones. I wasn’t alone then,

and worked there as a team. 
We evicted squirrels from their vast nutshell nest,

filled dumpsters with fifty years of trash.

It’s true. We’re useless without our vaginas.
How will you rape us? How will we birth daughters
and sons? I understand. We should laugh.
It would be better if we did, Mr. Duterte. 
In India, our leaders say eating chow mein
excites the hormones...