Asmā stares from time to time at the horizon. How the morning pleases his mother, Asmā at this point in spring. The Tamarisk forest beginning at the edge of her village like a crown on the nearby mountain, and fading at the foot of another mountain. The exhilarating cold weather encouraging her work.
Read MoreA little kid is sipping or
I’m in a magician’s hat
Longing to be free or
I’m in a glass casket
Waiting for your kiss
Your Great Grandmother’s
heirloom necklace.
Check.
She’s the one who died screaming in the attic?
Yes.
It is summer and the foothills
of LA burn. The ashes drift
as far as the ocean.
like ants on a work farm, villagers crawled through a narrow, dark, dank, dreary maze of tunnels.
Read Morethe Holy Ghost woman spoke with tongues
that licked inside my tiny ears and
left them moist with noise
Hills brown from arsenic
in copper smelter town
but most spring times
land shouts with grass
loved by winter snow melt
When I was nine months full
with your baby sleeping
sound in the shelter
of my womb I was filled
with a lifetime of yearning
When I catch one, Dad takes it off the hook and puts it in a bucket of cool water. After a while, he says time to go. We’ll turn the fish loose now he says. No, those are my fish. I want to take them home.
Read MoreWe rode the New York City subway cars alone
when we were fourteen.
You think I am lost
so you weep, blind to holy water
leaking from your swollen eyes
I collapse into him like
a wave breaks against
a house built too close to
the ocean
