Explore Poems: Concrete or Pattern Poetry

I love cherries.
The fruit, juice, jam,
blossoms, prints on a summer
dress, in a black forest cake…

only I stood in the rain with wet skin. I could taste the dew though it had not yet found my lips. …

Can You Hope Remember Remobilize Reorganize Revitalize Rewrite Relearn Repair Return

I
remember I exist
at the braiding of
             consciousand con
          sumer,Kanaka
        and culpable,
      desire anddesired…

Oh didn’t it """   """    """
                   ""      ""
                   ""      ""
                   ""      ""
                                "    
      ""                       "
           ""
                     ""
                     ""            ""
      rain
              ""
                                ""
                      ""    ""   ""
Oh did
           """      """       n’t…

                                                all     all
                                        all     all        

 View a PDF of the poem here.

the sac
itself wasclear      
        and I cleaned itlike a window
and in the windowsaw my baby
our baby[birdlike  
mouth opennasalarea still    
oversizedlike a beak]eye’s aperture blue-black    
head thrownbackand twisted beginning  
to separateneck brok
en in the contractions’violencetwo arms
two legstailbone translucent... [whatcolor is
the baby?]silent heart [sac contains“chorionic cavity”]
with utmost tendernessI...

I
see you,
peeping Tom,
beside yourself with
rage at what I done did,
hands gone idle from deprivation.
I see you, Uncle, with your fingers at the
trapdoor, to place crumbs of a biscuit at my mouth
in the dark. Through a hole the size of a...

I am
a product
of my time.
Time is a body
that resembles
a sound without a scale.
Forever foreclosed fortitude.
In heaven, the dinner bell rings
as elegy. The porch-light stars turn
on their mothering moths. Betrayal
takes at least two, and wherever two
or more are gathered, I am...

                     a muted longing for      a
             being of elsewhere without     a
             boundary or    a
       body like  a
ball to throw me around in    a
   pig skin of public parts
      of policies    zero
   privacies of every
     body  gets   a
   turn to frisk me of
numbered bodies &
   trophied bodies &
     saturated bodies...

I’ll keep this brief. I remember the shock of Mr. G’s tiger-striped trunks
at the Madras Gymkhana Club. Nothing to conceal, everything to
declare, like a Mills & Boon hero. Shiver of ball and sack, acres
of  hairy scrub. We could not imagine...

This
far north
the sun rises
and sinks in the
same spot. Insects
announce the apocalypse
and fog moves through all
the uncountable hours like a
bright gray scar. The forest is
awash in a dial of light more
luminiferous than a Canaletto. I
misuse the words  forest, woodland,
jungle because I...

Think
how many long years
this tree waited as a seed
for an animal or bird or wind or rain
to maybe carry it to maybe the right spot
where again it waited months for seasons to change
until time and temperature were fine enough to...

       Long     fing-     ers,       how
       signals   flow      up         them
        from      tip       and       finger-
         print   ...

Our love still young,                              our marriage new,
  Robert and I                                 ...

          The United Negro Improvement Association,
        he says, his little bloodshot eyes looking out
       of the dark shadows of his overhanging black
   brow. His eyebrows quizzical, halfway to a smile.
And over them,...

I surrender my weapons:
Catapult Tears, Rain-Cloud Hat,
Lip Zip, Brittle Coat, Taut Teeth
in guarded rows. Pluck this plate
of armor from my ear, drop
it in the Amnesty Bin,
watch my sadness land among
the dark shapes of memory.

Unarmed, now see me saunter
past Ticking Baggage,...