Poetry

Apples belong to the genus Malus. I stand with my hips pressing into the sink’s marble,
rinsing and twisting these sandy, gunmetal stems out of the fat fruit 

I found a black snake on the porch, its body so 
still I didn’t dare breathe. Lungs arrested, I might 
have left my body then. It was long, a rope I could 
Double Dutch, a tilde underneath every word I try 
to love differently.

Swifts do not guard their time; they do not linger. When they come 
back from Africa, we are happy. I was told to go back to Africa. The sea, 
that stupid slate wedge, sparks with such beauty. I feel lonely. A car goes past,

My dream daughter is chopping onions. 
She has been chopping for hours, slipping 
off the skin like tea-colored lingerie, slicing them 
thinly like the rings of some beloved planet.

I cannot remember the last meal I shared with my father.
Only those long last nights slipping him what ice chips
he could still stomach and then swabbing his chapped lips
with a wetted pink sponge.

Confusion is the foreigner’s advantage. Natives 
tamp the nuance in their sounds. Stranger 
seeking refuge pockets vowels, picks gesture,
learns body, gets caught up on the cobble 

Imagine you could learn 
the names of every river,
each upthrust mountain
and fault folded on itself:

There must’ve been some incident, something to push both Dickinson and Proust into isolation, the horse thought as a student, but now he thinks time and immortality require one’s full attention.