Poetry

“I wander down to the scrappy village, / and drop in at the butcher, where I pick up / rabbit, to brown, and simmer in saffron with rice.”

“This ripe beginning of decay doesn’t bother me. It reminds me of uncooked chicken, oily, / the cheap kind. My mother would leave it on the counter for a whole day, forgotten about / it in a spell, scalding; spit soaring, palms open.”

“He is oil, and oil is blood, and / blood is thicker than The Bible. His boots are thicker than the Bible. / His boots are leather made of old Bibles. His boots Are the Bible, / and the stool is the oil.”

“Across generations, I—a child, an ass, / a pubic hair exposed—developed. / I longed for violation called love. / Dissociation altered my spirituality.”

“A moment, then, of reckoning, / as the world burns and the institutions fall; / a weightless second dangling from the precipice of change / between the way things were / and the way they need to be.”

“eyes watering like mine did at dinner after that call, my mom, / who lets the soft pages of her sorrel-colored bookstore bible lap at the toes of her shame like / waves, asking “why.” she didn’t ask “why” the way she asks my sister when she cries (her sins / are soft, white, and small. you can roll them in your hands like pieces of tender gnocchi)”