Poetry

Every morning of my first year, my mother’s father drove over at dawn to bathe me and walk with me among trees, touching my tiny fingers to things as he named them, saying, bark, saying, web, saying, air and grandfather and granddaughter, all to say, Welcome; I have waited so long for you. At a …

God, we spend our whole / lives persevering / long winter stars scalding / us / as if heaven’s a place / real as the corner diner / alight all night / where I enter easily even as a sinner / hungering for eggs / over easy & devour them. / Let’s cover this early …

Or How to Disguise a Carolinian in New York INGREDIENTS 8 (4 ounce) catfish fillets 1 tsp cayenne (make it hot) 1 quart oil (sweated from a road stand 2 tsp pepper shambled & split) 1 pinch of garlic salt 2 cups buttermilk ½ tsp onion powder 2 cups cornmeal, thick as silt 1 dash …

may you know yourself in a world of noise & confusion when voices berate & anglicize remember your rootedness with each stomp like toph shake centuries-old rage off you / begin anew may you know hydration remember your cells are made from the same waters that coarse rivers the same rivers that jade mountains the …

Winner of the 2022 “49th Parallel Award” for Poetry What ails the nation’s lies unseats the sustenant. At least, it tilts halos, allies loss, attunes statues to skeletal white noon, an oilskin title, a tesselate ease I salute. I, the tithe, I the hesitant (no) saint (no) unholy. I, in the nuns’ salon. Thus, they …

This used to be a garden, before the strangers came with strange beliefs. They claimed to be cursed with something they called original sin, but blessed with something else, called dominion over the whole living earth. They tore apart the garden, insisted that the savage wilds be conquered and subdued to be improved. We are …

We barrel through backroads past pink plastic chairs, a puddle of bottle caps, titos squatting flat-footed under the greasy sun. Sweat rags swung around their necks, their tank tops rolled halfway up themselves, stomachs glistening. I cling to my torn leather seat, basketball shorts yanked in the wind, the smell of gas swatting my nose. …

The establishment poet writes poems with subtle rhymes and gentle wit that has no bite and beautiful, reassuring lines about how you are loved and the world is kind— lines you might find printed on coffee mugs or stitched on throw pillows in department stores, lines that might make a cheugy gal sigh, “Well isn’t …

Over a hundred years, no doubt, & big enough to need grinding, left instead to gray& grow smooth.

How can I explain this flightlessness? You’re in my air, I whisper back too late and turn away.