Now, let daybreak be my head and the year, my whole body.
An online southern Christian university ordained my smoker’s
cough to be a dove.
My favorite exorcism:
The demon, steeped in corn bread philosophy,
does not have enough ass to carry off the jeans he advertises
as he kneels down to the priest and holy water.
This is the deepest part of the world.
Bird don’t fly here,
but there is the sound of wings.
I had kissed
Delores Jepps. I wish I could
have some small memory of her
warm and spicy mouth to wrap
these hungry words around. I
window, small clouds rise. Papá dances
to the electric beat of the marimba,
his cheek bristly against Mamá’s
neck; his thick fingers sift
snow collecting
on the inside of the window
sill, trying to descend
the stairs silently
Did you know there were hundreds of little
night moths
crowded against the window pane
to catch a glimmer of light?
"Just dummies," laughs our dad, "Red Indians hung
or burned—it's only in jest." Every fall
brings the Big Game against Stanford, where
young scholars let off steam before the debacle
they may face of failed exams. "You're dead
wrong," he says to Mom. "They don't mock
One sentence or two? she wants to know. Comma? Period.
Well, I say, semicolons join and separate.
it might turn out to be
about Anna Mae Aquash, Donald Marshall or Richard Cardinal,
it might even turn out to be
about our grandmothers,