Poetry

That one smelled 
like a Bradford pear 
you said. 

St. Stephen’s Day: home unsettled, 
a rupture, and here the ruched 
branch has turned itself outward,

its soft, bright innards held up 
along the path. At first, a golden

Women used to wean their babies
By painting their breasts black.
Hurricane clouds are black.
The Earth is weaning us.

Before I leave for good, I lift the pie server a final 
time, drop the receipt facedown next to the lemon 
blueberry slice, then my apron in the parking lot

On a narrow plinth in the corner 
of the gallery, a stone portrait:
a man, his mouth unlipped

Pink is the Tuscan sunset. Pink
Are the Vietnamese monk pates
Bobbing under Piero’s True Cross.
Pink is plenty, pink is joy.

Wine between cacti and carnivorous flytraps,
our bodies syncing to the DJ’s bad decisions,
I can’t stop getting turned on

                                     leaves a race behind
                 takes on the music                                      pop
                 its relation                                                    to capital

In the dream my mother pours
a gallon of milk over my head
because her boyfriend held my hand
under the table.

                                    Universal Studios of riot 
                interspersed with whites holding
guns and carrying
people away.