I was birthed restless and elsewhere
 
gut dragging and bulging with ball lightning, slush,
broke through with branches, steel
 
I was bitch-monikered, hipped, I hefted
a whip rain, a swirling sheet of grit.
 
Scraping toward the first of you, hungering for wood, walls,
unturned skin. With...

Hurricanes, 2005
 
 
Arlene learned to dance backwards in heels that were too high.
Bret prayed for a shaggy mustache made of mud and hair.
Cindy just couldn’t keep her windy legs together.
Dennis never learned to swim.
Emily whispered her gusts into a thousand skins.
Franklin,...

It was like climbing a mountain to those of us who’d climbed one. To the others, it was like, I suppose, something else. In other words, we let everybody find her own figure of speech.

Not that it—speech—lay thick on the...

The heart, the surgeon says, does not reveal
the small rifts, the hairline cracks which

split the hairline cracks they conceal cops
and robbers in a stretch of skin flaunting

star-scars with show of blood bone
the ledges of what it holds tight in checkmate

moves:...

When I say But mother, Black or not Black,
Of course you are polyethnic, your look does not change
Though it does harden, a drying clay bust
Abandoned or deliberately incomplete,
All the features carved in
Except the eyes. What I’m trying—
I mean—You are an...

I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest,...