[a sestina] The horses, quiet, rest in the stable. My favorite chestnut stamps a hoof and raises one fine ear at the saddle, the picks and brushes I lay inside the stall. I brush his copper hair, slip the bridle over his head and lead him to the ring. As sand and gravel blow across [...]
Some friends and I climbed up the mountain, through the rhododendron leaves, along a winding crowded path choked with stones and languid vines. We stumbled in the midnight air, beneath cicada screams ringing through the hemlock trees. We’d lost the trail, the cell phone signals long before. We shone their dying lights on rocky ground, [...]
Before the rhododendron leaves, the rusted brown creek lies in the cool half-light below the embankment which is covered with climbing weeds and brown pine needles – and above it, scattered stones, two bottles, crumpled cigarettes, and rusted rivets strewn between rotting railroad ties.
I miss the silhouettes of the Victorian buildings cast on my boulevard in the morning air, the footsteps echoing on the metro tile, the elegant scrawls of Arabic graffiti on the walls. I miss wishing I could decipher their curves. I miss the narrow market streets at Denfert-Rochereau, the fromagère, his round wheels of pale [...]
I have known the loneliness of endless coffee spoons, bleakness of white napkins folded in neat squares placed on chipped saucers, all the sorrow of crushed sugar cubes, desolation of discarded newspapers, shriveled tea bags, biscuit crumbs, interminable emptiness of scratched chairs, austere tables, routine of bitter black coffee, habitude of lukewarm milk in miniature [...]
[a ghazal] We rode among the ashy aspens last winter, our horses’ hooves crunched through bracken last winter. I kept the letter you wrote me, tucked under a wine bottle, dampened, last winter. We stumbled into nameless pubs, floors sticking to our dirty boots in London last winter. My fingers trembled on the ferry railing, [...]
On my uncle’s back porch in July, small green lizards splay their toes against white wood, foregoing camouflage. Heavy air presses the orchid petals down until they touch the soil. The palm fronds with their jagged outlines cut dark against the sky shake brittle fingers. The humid wind rises. The hammock rocks, empty, back and [...]
Someday soon you will forget my name, forget that time we slept till three, waking only to the sound of a fly, trapped in your window, its papery wings beating on the dirty glass, the buzzing soon drowned out by the neighbor playing techno music, pulsing hard against the quaking too-thin plywood walls. You’ll forget [...]
One Easter morning my mother dressed me all in black before we went to church. and parked around the back. Adults clustered, whispering, glancing at the dead. I crept slowly between their legs, ducking my head. Kneeling by the casket, I stared at the gray face, stiff like wax, touched my palm to its cold [...]