Poetry

Rats can laugh, but the dogs aren’t smiling: they’re hooked on oxytocin, which rises when we lock eyes with one another. Oxytocin is not dissimilar to OxyContin, an opioid analgesic which can result in a similar sense of euphoria or...

At a certain point, I lost you. I came to know it first 
as a weather, the earliest hour of day breaking 
on the bedsilk, its low rung of light, a pregnant silence.

Time is the distance between birth and death. Parallel universes appear in real time on your screen. Place is an illusion. For instance, I am in the Palace of Versailles.

Two boys, pink in their manhood, lean over a balcony, full 
of teeth. Below: a brown man, skin tired of holding his bones. 
Work falls in shadows around his feet. 
The Puget Sound is bluer than any dream or sky. The boys loom, pink.

reeking of moss & blossom & on the street
i call home, i cannot be sure if i
exist. my thighs press on one another

in the selfie he is currently texting to “Lula Mae,”
the man next to me on flight 4853
to Columbia, dressed in a black turtleneck
and a thick double chain,

in the living room again, i cannot conjure
even the space i inhabit. rain for several

Surely you stay my certain own, you stay
obtuse. Surely your kisses were little poisons 
gripping tight my lips, my arms, mapping their way
across my unsure body. Surely, this fission

system says we’re not in charge of much else
but this. system’s [planter’s raj] & the damn 
tea. the Brits sell us, Lipton sells us, Tata 
sells us. when are we permitted to unload? 

Outside the Visitor Center—patrons queuing up in
khaki camo shorts, baseball caps, Where Big Bucks 
Lie, boxes of MoonPies wheeling by—two black 
men with rubber gloves, with Windex, on a July 
Monday, polish the bronze Lincoln.