Poetry

Generational Trauma

After carrying the weight of all this damage                                  for over thirty years, I wanted to be rid of it.                                  And not just the smell of it—all of it.                                                                   To remove it from my body like a malignant                                  growth or parasite. To deposit it in into                                  something: a jar, a forgotten account,                                                                   someone else’s body. To throw the shame                                  away. Into the trash. Into the ocean. Into a fire.                                  To archive the pain like slave schedules or                                 …

3 years ago

I just had the weirdest dream

This poem contains lines in Yiddish, with rough translations before and phonetic translations after. i. I just had the weirdest dream: We were strangers in the land of egypt.                   Fremde zenen mir geven in land mitsrayim                                     Hemmed lines in our hands gave way to mime and we mouthed a thousand languages – babel’s tatters gestured at our calloused feet. Each brick was a tongue,                   Yeder tsigl iz geven a tsung.                                     Friends at seder gummed their tile song, made mortar in their mouths to pave paths between wayward tribes. ii. I just had the weirdest dream. Our tonsils were the sand of the Sinai and our lungs were made of dust                   un undzere lungen zenen geven fun shtoyb;                                     we wetted tongues with wine to mend our voices delirious for want of water.…

3 years ago

Coloured Boys in the Suburbs Are a Novelty

On a sweltering Tuesday, me and Dylan pack into my beat up minivan and bump our stereo damn near to…

3 years ago

Portrait of the Author as a Field Guide Entry

Habitat: Thinks of somewhere she isn't— if it's Alaska, yearns for Spain or Texas; If it's Cuba, wishes herself on…

3 years ago

Pound

One afternoon near the end, before                the move, we walk the green by the mall and stop at the water…

3 years ago

Spell for Misheard Sound

                                                                                                    “7°F last night. Can't stop singing Johnny Shines:                                                                                                     ‘So cold in Vietnam, words don't sound the same.’"                                                                                                     —Jake Adam York,…

4 years ago

Rost, Metal Brave

                                                                                                      -On a mountainside in the Nora Sacred Lands A shadow rolls over the icecap,                 smothers a lighthouse subsumed by steel…

4 years ago

Self Portrait con Valencia

In ninth grade I discovered chemistry— intrigued by sodium, the soft metals                …

4 years ago

The Last Days of Paradise

The Last Days of Paradise We popped pills that made us feel like jazz, in our sealed, sub-nautical scream. When…

4 years ago

We Were All There

Down at the river’s lip                                                      we strip and wheel off the dock like moon-mad children, strewn into brackish nights…

4 years ago

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