Poetry

Able only to recall / his parting footsteps—the chipping away at / a tree one fells at last

Through the window, what light gives / new meaning in the day.

Some days, I sail on an empty boat to a country I don’t know. / With my navy-blue passport, I can go anywhere.

Three nudes crudely drawn. One crouching, 

back turned, right hand feeding the turtle 

of the painting’s title; another sitting, as if in a chair,

head bowed, eyes downcast; and a central 

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.