Poetry

What comes to mind when you talk of echo:   Are the abandoned buildings emptied by the noise of wars; Lofty buildings for the tourists and their guides in years to come.   Are boys searching for the voices of their missing parents, Under the heaps of dead bodies, hungry heads.   Are the girls […]

i ask that you return the dead, god, i ask that you turn the bullets toward the hands that shot into the crowd            in Fagba, a bullet tears open the stomach of a pregnant woman   i’d like to ask the drafting angel what it intends to do with the stillborn            […]

An Exchange I “You didn’t send me your list yet?” I murmur a procrastination. Undecided whether to tell you How I burnt the list. Blowing the ashes into the night air On the breath of my own longing. In any case the gifts I want No money can buy. Not now. Not this year. Not […]

  Words, words, words You failed me when I needed you the most You vagabond!   I (For them at the Murambi genocide memorial site in Rwanda)   Ploughed from the mass graves of History Exhibits on the pyre of empty testaments Equestrians of Trauma Signifiers of perpetual suffering Icons of silence, of the never-speech: […]

Someday I’ll love Kwaku Kyereh after Claire Schwartz  / after Ocean Vuong   Kwaku, you have loved—& you have been loved, where the skin did not break is where it blackens.   Give thanks, Kwaku—give thanks, to the trees & the wind that gives them rhythm—to the   birds that learn to make a home […]

Forgive me this Grace “in Italy a lot of migrants beg for moneyfor food, on the street” — Lucky I remember your face, veteranof the Mediterranean, of sea crossings,veteran of boats. I listen in stillness. I do not say to you, my guilt is America.I listen to you talk of shurroty, the act of beggingfor […]