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Once you enter these hallowed halls
speak not in your inherited gutter language.
Speak in the patrician language of classical ass-fuckers
or else your utterances will find no echo
in this epitome of excellence.

Ghosts cursed and slammed
hardwood doors on me
as I attempted to navigate my way
through coloni… Read full post »

The other day, roam reading my way through Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, I found myself reading a delightfully powerfully poem by Frank X. Walker. I liked the poem, titled Homeopathic, so much that I googled him to see what I could find out.… Read full post »

His wizened hand reaches out from
the hospital bed to touch
her too thin forearm.

I’m eating, she says. Read full post »

the referencing of rain
as the inbred cousin
of disaster
recklessly
breeding babies
given the names
of diseases
i can’t help.

here, no notions
of amber waves
no bombs that burst
like they do
over there

here, bombs
deconstruct dams
decimate pride
homogenize
neighborhoods
and otherwise act
as agents
of social c… Read full post »

 (this is a revision of a poem previously posted in may as "apple pie")

 

in the beginning
he was hale and hearty
with the look of someone
who fed regularly
on pork and corn.

he and the others
who looked just like him
rejoiced
at the chance to spread
such heartiness abroad
but then came bodies
harden… Read full post »

The hills my brothers & I created
Never balanced, & it took years
To discover how the world worked.
We could look at a tree of blackbirds
& tell you how many were there,
But with the scrap dealer
Our math was always off.
Weeks of lifting & grunting
Never added… Read full post »

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a… Read full post »

In the World language, sometimes called
Airport Road, a thinks balloon with a gondola
under it is a symbol for speculation.

Thumbs down to ear and tongue:
World can be written and read, even painted
but not spoken. People use their own words.

Latin letters are in it for names, for… Read full post »

I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the ev… Read full post »

 

 

 

The House of Sand and Fog engaged me from the opening lines when I encountered Massoud Amir Behrani, a colonel under the former Shah of Iran. Now an immigrant in the San Francisco Bay Area, he works back-breaking… Read full post »

Thank you for inviting me to this today. It is always an honour and a pleasure to be here, among you (at the European Parliament).

However, I must admit I believe you should have invited a Palestinian woman at my stead, because the women who suffer most… Read full post »

Musical is the melody of my words

this freaky Friday when fellatio is the first

thing you utter but my tongue is already prepared

to undulate in tonal movements both dulcet and flat.

 

The warp to your woof, I arch myself over your earth.… Read full post »

Statement by Jewish Activists and Organizations active in BDS against Israel

A Jewish response to the February 2011 Statement of Jewish Zionist Organizations on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)… Read full post »

 

 

 

 

 

I just bought this book today. The first poem I read, and absolutely love, is by Kevin Young:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eddie Priest’s Barbershop & Notary
Closed Mondays

is music   is men… Read full post »

There is a particularly trenchant scene in the documentary film, Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead, in which Blecker — who teaches at New York Law School and is the nation’s most prominent pro-death penalty scholar — travels to Tennessee’s Riverbend Prison for the execution of c… Read full post »

 

This is my son. He goes to a school where he is, racially speaking, a "minority". He is seven and in the first grade. Since he started first grade, he has had to deal with another child telling him his "skin is like poop" as well as being hit…

Read full post »

 

 

 Not very orderly looking, I admit. Biodiversity isn’t always neat and orderly – especially if you’re into companion planting, which I definitely am. Flowers. Arugula. Collard greens. More flowers.

 

 

 My seed. I learned to be a m… Read full post »

When I heard the news of bin Laden's death, hmmm America went into another country without that country's knowledge or approval and summarily executed a man. How awfully democratic.

I also wondered how different that was from people flying planes into buildings.

Then I saw the reports of the jubilia… Read full post »

Visibly invisible,
indigo stains my psyche
while I struggle with the reality
that flesh doesn’t live forever.
 
Memories of a turquoise ring
which encircled and encapsulated
but now it is now like the children
the mothers raised placards for:
disappeared.
 
My soul mined like Afghani lapis lazul… Read full post »

in the beginning
he was hale and hearty
with the look of someone
who fed regularly
on jpork and corn.

he and the others
who looked just like him
rejoiced at the chance to spread
good american ideology abroad.
but then came sightings of
white bodies
hardened and curled
in the snow
of a german winter.

it was unfat… Read full post »

1

uncountable the number of skins shed

during the infinity of my existence.

one more sloughing off insignificant

like fecal matter.

 

i slither free of medusa

an almost millennial endeavor

involving

stripping gods and goddesses… Read full post »

wind carried cold
through el barrio
to le grotto ghetto
that secret space
where muralistas
channeling frieda
diego and zarraga
paint monuments
to the past
to lives not lived
and anything else
eyes itch to see.

cold curled up next
to the frescos
hoping its frigidity
would halt
the desecration.

wind didn’t wai… Read full post »