Poetry

The specific affliction of her curse? Doomed to be cared for 
only by those she holds in complete and utter contempt.

Katie said they were nettles and I guess she was right. I think they’re very pretty—taller than I 
am, thin-throated and headed with a pink bulb made of linear petals. I don’t know what they feel like, though I’ve wanted to touch.

Is programming not a kind of poetry?
Ones and zeros of the heart.

Who knows how many of us 
                                                  you’ve killed, dead set 
on what flows beneath, your mouth

At thirty, I am a child again learning
banana, apple, and orange,
clasping words and fumbling my meanings.

Driving in the American West, reading Celan
and the Mahabharata. After the war,
Arjuna drops the bow forged by Brahma back
into the ocean, relinquishing it

Night’s endlessness taps at the mind,
my jet lag a constant drip down the windows.
Because I am here for a month, a girl returned
to her mother, I let myself go soft

What about the man who cannot touch 
anyone without them morphing 
into the only woman he loved and lost? Not recklessly,
but like a river diverted by a stone’s weight, 

Nothing can stop the dogs
from barking, not even

the moon’s new dress.