Poetry

to chase transgression, tussle demons in a private show

to escape—one last time—that worn-out chest

These days, I stand to gather the bones

blows between earth and sky

A stilled world, living in frames?

clenched muscles relax without warning

on the lake shuts tight

Bring me flowers and bees.

sagging above the deep

Strapped to a machine alone the suck thump thump suck thump thump

Yes, I just used scare quotes. I can’t help myself

    Stardust and Moonlight: A Love Poem Beaches built of melted Sun. Iridescent air Lavender thoughts sprinkle Yearning on sun-whipped skin Oceans shout to the shore, “I will sing to you of love.” Waves recede with a kiss.   […]

  Dhrupad of Destruction I see Nataraja dancing on a lofty hill, to the sound of crushing ice, Melting glaciers and rising seas. Primordial forces unleashed. From the dark corners of the earth, I hear the eternal rumble of Chaos […]

  Eocene Time of rising temperatures the dawn horse gallops on primitive hooves greeting the day’s heat with hunger and teeth grinding small-brained toward longer-limbed progeny expanding onto the first grassy plains no mountains to snow on but coming on […]

Dusk On Loukes Lake (for Kathleen) thin spirits of mist rise immobile on a lake flooded to ice by the calm water bugs skate in circles to a waltz of their own signature my canoe glides on the echoes of […]

    Call of the Loon Come back. It’s cold here without you. When I bend my neck to drink there is no reflection in the water. Come back to the wild. When I call your name it ricochets off […]

    Mitochondrial Eve A plague of poppies: salmon, tomato, apricot. Some years I save the seeds, audible in upright cups, and carry them, carefully, to make two lemon cakes, eat all those flowers. Flowers that are as famous as […]

  Turbulence it’s not the breath, in or out not quite breath’s only the boundary sneaks past smooth ebbs on laminar silent it’s where streamlines retch mouth shot off with plosives, or trills eddying deep into passionate night where breath […]

  I I find her hunched in her chair a wizened crow wrapped in a food-smeared bib porridge drying on her mouth and chin. Her hands are bony and translucent and her nails curl back on themselves like talons. She […]

  Cardinal Flower Red flash— a few sprigs puncture the monotony of brown-green bog, never-ending evergreens and skeletons of cedar. I know you, skulking in the wetlands between bridge and dam, around the island, beneath the boulder’s shoulder, under jack […]

  ODE TO HIPPOCRATES Who’s Hippocrates, I know, in Crete or someplace else – calling out to the Sirens, the Sea’s own and asking you for healing ways, the mind or spirit’s, not the body’s own. Oh, the body, and […]

  Snow Is Falling Snow is falling. The earth turns white. Its new skin is as smooth as silk. The sun hides behind a veil. I stay confined inside my shelter while the cedars run between the houses and collect […]

    Summernote V Call her goddess of heath and yellow gorse. Tell her you have left the moon unlit. Snuggled into its folds. Swamp-fed forest creeks. Grafted to fen carr, sedge grasses. Dwarf blackberries. See if she believes you. […]

    Cheeky Mathematics He and she fuse their cells with the sticky glue of their warm juices Two cells become one which then divides and multiplies until one plus one adds up to ten perfect little toes Baby trades […]

    1. Circumstance and sorrow had aged me by the time I found my way into the fire-blighted wood scorched by flames rising up from an earth ravaged by explorations for oil, its water table plundered relentlessly by impulses […]

    I am nobody else’s version of who I am You cannot set your mind based on my looks alone There is no language that defines me Do not box me in Because I am my own I choose not to be enslaved […]

  We are still here Aimé, us the niggers of the north An otherness-nothingness imprisoned in our minds by our colour   I have heard of white writers who claim to be bush niggers they live outside the high prison […]

    Seven Mountains For my maternal grandmother   That moment when you see spring on your windowsill you have lost your sister, ceramic pot yellow daffodils, nodding buds. Wilted petals. Ruffled trumpet. Shriveled and fading that moment when news […]

sometimes I dream that speaking Hausa would make me feel better

In the rich dread of my predecessors.