Poem — I am thirsty But the teacup is years away and shattered. Its shards seek one another in my memory. To wait until the teacup has come together. Better to have a life unlived than lived — and hardly mine. Is it still so? I can still hear the banging on…

Poem — I am frightened, And frightening. You wanted to know my heart? Here it is, revealing itself. Here it is — the thing you have waited for so long. Of course the love is there. Too much addressed to you And not enough to myself. But will be soon. And if…

What isn’t may be — Days on which the absence of things takes a hold of me. Takes up space in the rain outside, in my memory, masks my shadowy childhood, finishes on its own what I did not begin. I’ve never seen the past walking faster. I no longer mistake it for myself. Holding…

Poem — I look into my face like one looks down from a high building Throwing a smile to cover the silence. No one’s alone, yet the dead ride alone in the hearse And we ride alone in our hearts. I knew a girl once. In the summer, she took her body into…

Poem — My hands have not known the hurt of trying to open some door they have not known clawing seeking help because help did not exist I invented it I became it An outside and an inside a mask of a face at the center Fear avoided my name & my pronoun I…

Poem — Fears sing around the table And I wait here on my wooden legs that do not know how to let go. They’re almost as old as I am, yet they cry like newborns, they cry all the time. When I hang up the family portrait, When I hang up the phone, When I…

Poem — Hope is a mountain of bones I must clean and sharpen press against the others and against myself. - Why would you wound me like that? - To know you exist. Pain repays you by being poisonous. And you want me to trace back the source of my suffering. Let’s say it hasn’t dissolved back into reality. Let’s say it still exists. It is something…

Poem — Hide the daughters from their mothers. Mothers pass on monsters through the womb, feeding them tiny particles of faceless terrors. Here, a single strand of my hair, Take it! It stores winter blood, slaughter blood, harnessed by the hands of women, fed to apron pockets. Why are their mouths open, wailing…

Poem —