Excerpt from an afro-surrealist short story. — … She laid her hand against the bark of the tree closest to her. Cool to the touch, its ridges velveted with moss, it seemed to grow soft and spongy beneath her palm. …

The time I (almost) ate it all — The last slice of my mother’s black cake leans against the silvered sides of the Danish butter cookie tin, sliver-thin and crumbling. “You don’t savor things,” you chide, spearing it into your mouth— the one morsel I saved for you. I tried. But cane stalks swaying over bodies bent, falling to the glint of iron beneath a marauding sun— burnt sugar, treacly and intractable, congealing from golden-brown to bitter black—

A free verse poem modeled after Edip Cansever’s “The Table”, as prompted in How to Grow Your Own Poem by Kate Clanchy A woman, laden with the day’s debris, comes home and drops her bag on the bed. Her phone with its scuffed case, her blue pashmina shawl— she drops those too. The clicking of the keyboard and the monitor’s cold glare clink against the car keys hiding beneath the pillow’s scalloped edge.

The fragility of life — All my life has been a fall controlled. Balance the counterweight. Dance on the spear’s tip. Don’t let them trip you up. Slide beneath the wires. Waltz between the raindrops. Soar on notebook paper wings held steady by a thread. Here in the moment you are home hopscotching between stalls smiling thank you for the extra plantain and yes, you’d like your watercress clipped. The game goes on until you stumble.

We are all legion … We hold to the myth of the ‘one’ self, the idea that we are each a person, an autonomous, distinct and unique whole, a singular line, a thread, because it seems easier to traverse this reality wearing that suit. …

A freeform poem about how longing can engender resonance — “It’s no good if it’s full,” he said, blowing across the bottle’s mouth. Sibilant hiss to sonorous hum, pennywhistle to pipe organ wail. “The emptier, the deeper the tone.” Like these words resounding in my chest, a guitar strummed. Like these poems, round and aching as a cello’s moan.

Acknowledging the inevitable — All these years spent circling our death tighter and tighter the spiral as she squats there awaiting our arrival. *In some indigenous cultures, the spider (and the web) are symbols of the infinite cycle of life and death. From that perspective, death is a sort of homecoming, a doorway to new beginnings.

The sacredness of a daily ritual — Don’t want dog in my coffee I tell myself washing my hands at the kitchen sink The kettle sputters into song my palms clasp the mug in supplication steam rises like incense she flops at my feet and sighs heavy as unleavened bread “This is my body that was broken for you Take it and eat in remembrance of me” As if I could forget your fingers skimming the arc of my spine

A micropoem — My longing for you, an old wound, throbs when it rains.