From my belly I spit little fires— / they are sweet & hurt & dusty. / Each slippery flame is work / to keep warm.

...God, I hate November / All the hope I had hoped / Against hope for Jordan.

About 600 miles south of the North Pole stands the world's northernmost statue of Lenin. The face is like a mask, with a guarded but threatening expression.

I wrote my first will in the womb; / a firstborn falsely preceded by / three siblings.

Crossing your legs at the / knees is a way. Walking with your feet / in line is a way. Learning to breathe / one lung at a time is a way.

Homes would switch without warning. Keys stopped working. That’s what I yelled, banging on the door, “My key doesn’t work!” before finding the concrete planter and hefting it through the sidelight

swallowing a glass piano / if I move / it will shatter into pieces

It matters / what u put inside ur body / like it matters, / matter of fact, / what’s in our air

Girls working at counters often daydream. / You clutch a tree-printed sweater, finger / seams like lines of rough hands

I ring,
like /        / y’all
hear that / ​       / right?

in the summers when / the forests fall, and artemis wakes to dust and dirt / she finds a second home amidst the undergrowth.

Diogenes begs for alms from a statue / to pick up the practice of being refused.

we were hemming unending sheets for armless angels a craving for sand filled our bellies we slobbered as we talked in our sleep

it began with the woman in the grocery store / filled with white shoppers and brown workers / and me with a face that makes the real americans ask

no one talks about death / echoes are a form of punishment

I would advise you to get a dog or a cat if you don’t already have one. Anything that makes you smile just by looking at them—

No one understands loss until sunken by it, / once able to grasp the concept of standing, now / tied to the bed, to the floor

the iconographer’s ambulance of red / first the riser then the tread / riser, tread / riser, tread

Innocence, you send away, in carriage, / feathered, by break of day.

it’s a chore // it’s a chore to read / another chore