Explore Poems

in the early twenties
a boat brought
my father to america
his first impressions
were spoken in spanish

years…

an arrangement
of trained plucks
& then a full-palmed flood
of contented ones opens
into a siren that…

here
near the entrance to the subway
the underground
we stand in each other’s eyes
once lovers
now …

These days, freedom
means: no shame.

What she calls
your cock rises
at its name, invisible

as wind…

manifold we tippytoed
niminy-piminy out of the enormous green door

and into the money

monkeys in …

I don’t want to say
things were indescribably
bad exactly

but things were
indescribably bad exactly…

Israel’s started
bombing
Gaza again
I don’t know
where to put it
in relation
to the ordinary
sadness…

we would take the train to brooklyn
leaving the bronx
down through harlem
out to prospect park
bergen…

in cuba
a dark skin woman asks me
if i’m from angola
i try to explain in the no spanish i know
that…

when trees bend funny and out of shape
when lightblue skies turn blueblack gray
hungry winds will
knock…

gaza at daybreak
dogs sniff among the ruins
the graves are multiplying

andre’s father
was from haiti

he was a happy man
who kept a jar
of white people
in his window

kept…

only language 
can hold us together

i watch the women
bead their hair
each bead a word

braids becoming
sentences…

i suppose i should be
grateful to the white man
letting me out. where can
a black man in america go…

our friendship
is what keeps us whole
love is essential as air

prayer contains desire
to worship is…

i will die this month. how
i do not know. still there
is much work to be done. i
am afraid not for myself…

“I can’t breathe,” he said.
But there was no air.
Only the absence of trees
and rope. The swaying
of…

Dear America, my love.
If my blackness turns to fruit
do not pull it from the vine;
let it grow from…

After reading my obituary
folks went to their local bookstores
looking for my books. For a few days…