Poetry Archive

PARABELLUM In July enough rain to get the stream flowing in the other direction; but sufficient sunlight to raise the heads of drooping flowers seen through windows unwashed in all these … [Read more...]

More Than the Dying and the Wars and Our Words about Them To sit here on this roof with the Sierra Nevada mountains in my mouth and the Alhambra’s blossoming gardens up my nose and the tiled … [Read more...]

waiting in the car outside the senior center hot on the arm by the window a breeze comes in stirs my hair dryer air & I can hear a/c drones little dogs squeaking a handtruck in a … [Read more...]

A Variable. A Choice. A thing shyly revealed should be holy obviously controlled by spirituality and politics not self, like--- a womb, virginity, marriage, the body. Imagine barcodes … [Read more...]

isthmus on our dates he’d take a pack of cookies, a roast chicken, and me down to the lakefront where stairs empty to saltwater, hand me a wing or two, and lick the rest from his knuckles, … [Read more...]

birthday have you once felt inspiration from something ceasing / once, I saw a bird collapse out of the blueness it was once kept in / it plummeted, in silence, and I thought how / nice it would … [Read more...]

Multimedia If I were an elephant all my paintings would be of oranges, flecks left in where white paper could peak out and mirror light on skin. And people would look at the paintings and … [Read more...]

Becoming A Man I am donning a crown of ants from the sidewalk. I am putting an ear to the floor of the garage. Cohabitation. A sky-tar. Impress the girls because (you want to be one). Show them a. … [Read more...]

the cemetery that was ash It was the last day of summer  /  when the church cemetery became ashes  /  as it burned  /  schools of … [Read more...]

when we move in February and it feels like spring and as a deer gang harass a neighbor’s garden at midnight she sneers can you talk about a dam every day can you feel it you feel the … [Read more...]

  Notes: Nods to Elaine Bleakney’s For Another Writing Back, Irene Drennan’s “Totems Wait,” Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge’s “Alakanak Break-Up,” and Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything. … [Read more...]

The War A lotus can’t become words—life bleeds out. Still I struggle to engrave the water’s face, the lotic Mess: Daylight speckles the orchard. I long to pin this dragonfly down & … [Read more...]

Oral History of a Touch-Starved Maniac Can it be in Byzantium 547CE a king steps from his bath at the same moment I glance inside a Starbucks window and see my own reflection staring … [Read more...]

WORDS THAT MAKE US INTO BEASTS how now can the gods not protect us from the rotten words into which our bodies melt – the swollen forest of grief where only black sunshine rises. the … [Read more...]

Finally, my hands are glowing For all the transgender warriors’ lives lost in 2017 Chico, hear me out, 25 of my deities have vanished this year. Their colors stain my skin and I want them … [Read more...]

You’re alone in a room you have nothing for (and by) Vito Acconci When I started out as a poet didn’t want abstraction abstraction used by religion politics didn’t want any of that. … [Read more...]

No Place I started a project for an isolated tree I know googled “unconventional girdle use” and looked at the girdle section on Amazon I showed that tree a video called “How to Perform a … [Read more...]