​She listened for the bombs:
            palms clung to glass
            senses distressed
She waited for 
her black silhouette to erupt
            & the moment she could feel her ancestors
            praying all night       or
            chanting to the dead
She waited in grief’s circle
            in the center of her living room window
            losing America
            to the quietude
& what happens when the glass breaks?       
When something gets inside?
What happens when the rustic metaphors appear
            and her thoughts are grenades?
Shall she wait for the breath of hate to dance
down earth’s aisles?
she who has carried babies in her wounds
she who has lived on the planet of being
she who has remnants of the dead in her headwrap
she who has mourned suns       & endured the listening
She waits      I wait  
We know they’re coming

Artist:  Augustus John 
b. January 4, 1878, Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales; d. October 31, 1961, Fordingbridge, Hampshire, England
Title:  Two Jamaican Girls
Date: 1937
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Mother, I keep praying the parts of you
out of me   & yet you keep returning,
 
always wearing a second hand dress
always fraught and wayward
always sunbathing in grief;
 
refusing to love any one island           or man.
 
& you know how hard I’ve tried to not disappoint you
            but how I’ve innately become a wound on the flesh   salted,
 
& how you have carried me like a knife on the tongue          twisting
 
& how each time I tried to say goodbye    it was your maternal glory
            that choked me  & I couldn’t let go,
 
just like you couldn’t bear to love the one who reminded you                      of yourself,
 
& how each time you tried   you recited prayers of your own:
 
 Dear Lord,  you have buried a gun in my womb     please    don’t shoot

"Daughter Hymn"  has been published by America Magazine September,  2020

 
Beyond the window
where the water brings
the handsome things
 a song overrides the wreck
 
I listen
 
for where the day meets sunrise
and a lovers quarrel can be heard
across the bay
in a small kitchen   lit with soft white light
 
I listen
 
for a Wednesday paradox;
an old man whistling   hola
in a goodbye boat
 
I listen
 
to the hum of raggedy curtains
blue with truth
and a dish towel   set aside
to wipe away my dread
 
I listen
 
to what I have refined within a woman;
the wind against my youth
groves of uttering shrubs
            fields of sky;
tattered leather flats
a whole wide world
cast-away
 
and these cabin fever hips
that soon again   will dance

​"Beyond the Window after Salvador Dali's Figure at the Window" has been published by 433, May 2020

                 for Edward Hopper's Night Windows

​Artist: Edward Hopper
b. July 22, 1882, in Nyack, New York; d. May 15, 1967, New York City, New York
Title: Night Windows
Date: 1928
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​I have lived in this place all along
performing for the stars
catching a glimpse of myself
split open and stark
in such a lovely room of windows

and the way I remember it is

I clung my lumps in pink
and scattered my feet on green grass carpet

I never knew my neighbors

I never hid the fire red of my solitude
nor the things that called my name:

nostalgia
relinquishment
undressed heroism

and the desperation of curtains
needing to be held by wind

and I may say tomorrow
that when the night comes
I am at my best
daring to do this again

baring it all
in a corner apartment
​3 stories high
in a modest place called home

​Artist:  René Magritte
b. November 21, 1898, Lessines, Belgium; d. August 15, 1967, Brussels, Belgium
Title:  The Lovers II
Date: 1928
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When I watch you     mouth    thickened with autumn 
I cannot find the words   or   the parts of myself    that were there
when we walked into this room   sweet man   this place is no more
our home   this day has   ripened in our farewells    and we are no
longer the kiss    before the day    we lived    to reinvent   I have been  
indifferent towards this   unseeing   but today I will not
live in this hunger   any longer   I will not stifle   my dreams     or
deport another vision   to the idea   that you will catch up   sweet man
I acknowledge your honesty about what   eludes you     and   how much 
you want it back    you want me   but   I am so   unsure
about men in love    with me   or anything else     I need  
to see     to watch    to open    my eyes   in a room
that will   finally    have
me

  for Jacob Lawrence’s The Migrants Arrived in Great Numbers; Panel 40 of the Great Migration Series

​
​Artist:  Jacob Lawrence
b. September 7, 191, Atlantic City, New Jersey; d. June 9, 2000, Seattle, Washington
Title:  The Migrants Arrived in Great Numbers.
Date: 1941
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singing the blues
weeds
biting their shins
each step
enchantment,
each dress, pants, blouse
sketched from the
soreness of their fingertips.
And they’re arriving,
so late now,
after the rain has passed,
after they have buried
their own
and never believed
this day would come,
or that each person
would be a person,
or that each gulp of air
            escaping their bellies          
would paint the sky,
would pave the terrain,
would tell the aching to stop
or begin.
And then they arrive,
when they’re revealed                      
by God
and their sacrifice to
the earth,
which rises to meet them,
in each stride,
in each strand of expectation,
each hue of brown;
leather, flesh and hope,
seeking a new beginning;
an unknown voyage
which began,
the moment they were free to leave…
​

 
Artist: Henri Matisse
b. December 31, 1869, Le Cateau, Picardy, France; d.  November 3, 1954, Nice.
Title:  Interior With Goldfish
Date: 1914
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From a small place of drowning 
 anyone can be a goldfish

hushed and philosophical
 
whispered and tapered to glass
 
anyone can be sedated by absence
 
& take on the hour
that has arrived
where things have gone missing:
 
the bodies lounging in crooked blue chairs
the cups of coffee cooling on the gray bench
the sounds of children playing in a city of great revelation
the exit signs    
 
anyone can wrinkle
from being unable to render a sound
 
and knowing of the feelings
   of not knowing:
 
the fearless silhouettes of black
the buildings looming over moss
the dulling sky
 
and the strange woman
who fully understands

​anyone can become a goldfish                       
if they’re not careful

The world was already here
Serene in its otherness.
It only took you to arrive
On the late afternoon train
To where no one awaited you.
– Charles Simic
 
 all at once she appears   
walled into her dangers
listening to what doesn’t answer
signing her name   on the whole wide world
letting go nothing
and anything
feeling like nothing inside her

sometimes she’s fenced into stone
silent    dried up     gray
as her youth    reveals a garden of mirrors
 
painting  her
inadequately                mended.
 
Without effort she sits perfectly still
on raging      roots  
 
which rise                    like a colorless bird
out of  a black and white photo.
 
If only I had known     
her heart                      would be a landscape of  weeds
I would have stayed longer.
 
I would have dreamed
with my mouth            wide open
 
and did all that has not begun.
 
If only I had known   what has left already
I would have waited,
 
would’ve sustained her tall spirit   of black dust
kissed her nose
and lingered   for her love   
                                which blossoms   in such serene solitude.

Artist: Henri Matisse
b. December 31, 1869, Le Cateau, Picardy, France; d.  November 3, 1954, Nice.
Title:  Male Model
Date: 1900
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​I keep tracing the outline of this life
against my body
crucified      blue      ailing   
                chronic solitude   and a shoe box full of receipts
 
then I get older   taller    borrow   my father’s   beard
and take        deep deliberate breaths    while choking on undertones of brown   
 
 I fear this masculinity   may be a façade
And I fear my back      will begin to whisper
against my sorrow   against the wall
      I go to great lengths to protect   
 
this life                 where I am aching
this         ambiguity of                       shame and solitude
this life where
                I am paying the price of blue

                    for Georgia O'Keeffe's The Black Place

​Artist: Georgia O'Keeffe
b. November 15, 1887 Sun Prairie, Wisconsin; d. March 6, 1986, Santa Fe, New Mexico City.
Title:  The Black Place
Date: 1944
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With this stone, I am no melancholy woman:    

not relentless
in consideration of death
in the  gray morning
                                                                                     
or groaning at the sunlight
 slipping between the rock.
                                                                                     
Instead,
I am a voice     emerging
 
from the borders of winter;
a victor          in the parting of the red sea
 
  a root thrived 
 in the smallest part of earth
 
whispering:       here I am       here I am       here I am
             
                                                                              free