we sift through the detritus
of the cellar—

tea sets, tennis rackets,
a whole box of Herb Alpert

& The Tijuana Brass (here my eye lingers
on a woman in whipped cream

lingerie, finger on her tongue, pale rose
drooping from her hand)—

until some treasure is found,
a well-fitting suit, a sofa for the apartment

next year. we do this
knowing that someone died

and we will, too, surrounded
by things; only unlike

pharaohs we are not preserved
with them. we do not outlast

the roses, the temples
we bury—

         …a silence in which another voice may speak.
                                                                    Mary Oliver

From family dinners
to food trucks
Porcelain China
to paper bowls
Crystal goblets
to plastic cups
Bearnaise
to mayonnaise
The art of fine dining
has been laid to rest
for something counterfeit
Oh, for a resurrection!

We throw our words out into the wind
hoping one day the intent will echo back
without undue distortion from the valleys, cliffs,
or caves where people jeer at shadows—
for the ones who walked away
were too weary or too wary
to return and build a proper skylight,
only chiseling a few small cracks
which let but a whisper of our words seep through.

Her skin is noire     purple undertones
Glistens like black sand on a beach     sun beaming down at half past noon
Her brows lifted in a striking arch
Cheekbones that are chiseled
Jawline sharp  and defined   framing her features
Knotless braids cascade past v-tapered shoulders
She is art personified  

But when she sees herself in the mirror
Pain rushes forth from her throat    a guttural cry
She cannot silence the voices that scream
                            Too black
                                            Ugly
                                                     Monkey  

By the time we meet
Shards of her confidence
Scattered across the floor
A broken little girl  

I want her to see herself
As I see her
Stunning  

Together we open the pages of
The Skin I Am In
Discover a story that mirrors hers    and mine
A school aged girl caressed by the Egyptian god of melanin
But confronted with colorism   bullied for being too black
A teacher who is mocked
For her facial features   a blotch of white on her ebony skin  

We continue turning the pages
Until we reach the story’s end
She now looks in the mirror
And declares she loves
The skin I am in

The man remembers
the two most important words.
They are, I defect. 

Drowning in Sweetness

I leaned over the rim;
vertigo dragged me
into the well’s unblinking eye
until the mountains vanished.

Unmoored.

Heavy, cold, damp air—
wet moss, cold iron, old earth.
A breath that had never known daylight.

Still, I drank.

The water slid velvet down my throat,
a polished stone
dropping through my chest.

It carried a gravity
that found the cracks in my bones;
a sweetness not sugar
but the stone-deep quiet
the mountain keeps.

The well is boarded now, the light cut off—
yet the sweetness lives in my bones.

I have tasted the roots
of the mountain
that swallowed me whole.

The day Cowboy was to hang, bargained hard for what was left in his soul.

It’s all about the pheromones. Chemicals
and choreography. Chemicals and you’re a little
buzzed. Tiny yellow-faced drone, you tremor
your native tongue but bees, like humans,
are broken communicators. If bee A
finds pollen he can tell bee B where to find
it, but until bee B locates the gold dust
himself he cannot tell bee C where to go.
Are you trying to tell us something, bee? You’re
hungry. Endangered. Disconnected
because you seizure your pain, but of course
we close our ears. I’m sorry, digger,
carpenter, miner bee.
When the daisies have been plucked
and there is no one left
to buzz, then, bee,
we may hear you.

Captured in crystal, dust, and stone,

the creatures of the past caught my attention.

Impossibly complex and cunning,

their world consisted of forests without end

perforated only by volcanoes 

and curtains of meteors 

further mixing up the soup of the past. 

This vibrant illuminated text

leaches not the toxic nostalgia

of an era long gone and long missed,

whose beauty belies danger

because that was the only truth

allowed to be told then.

No, that past was the future 

I wanted to see

beyond every horizon

and across every world

that those above told us 

we’d explore 

when we were older.

I stared at fossils and illustrations

of long-dead denizens for years

only to grow up in a world

where the fossils fight back,

and they do so with much less beauty

than an ambling archaeopteryx might manage.

These fossils still poison us

to move us towards their forward, 

yet time only moves in circles

for those without a future.