Medical History

I’ve been pregnant. I’ve had sex with a man

who’s had sex with men. I can’t sleep.

My mother has, my mother’s mother had,

asthma. My father had a stroke. My father’s

mother has high blood pressure.

Both grandfathers died from diabetes.

I drink. I don’t smoke. Xanax for flying.

Propranolol for anxiety. My eyes are bad.

I’m spooked by wind. Cousin Lilly died

from an aneurysm. Aunt Hilda, a heart attack.

Uncle Ken, wise as he was, was hit

by a car as if to disprove whatever theory

toward which I write. And, I understand,

the stars in the sky are already dead.

A Violence

You hear the high-pitched yowls of strays

fighting for scraps tossed from a kitchen window.

They sound like children you might have had.

Had you wanted children. Had you a maternal bone,

you would wrench it from your belly and fling it

from your fire escape. As if it were the stubborn

shard now lodged in your wrist. No, you would hide it.

Yes, you would hide it inside a barren nesting doll

you’ve had since you were a child. Its smile

reminds you of your father, who does not smile.

Nor does he believe you are his. “You look just like

your mother,” he says, “who looks just like a fire

of suspicious origin.” A body, I’ve read, can sustain

its own sick burning, its own hell, for hours.

It’s the mind. It’s the mind that cannot.

OBJECT PERMANENCE

We wake as if surprised the other is still there,
each petting the sheet to be sure.

How have we managed our way
to this bed—beholden to heat like dawn

indebted to light. Though we’re not so self
-important as to think everything

has led to this, everything has led to this.
There’s a name for the animal

love makes of us—named, I think,
like rain, for the sound it makes.

You are the animal after whom other animals
are named. Until there’s none left to laugh,

days will start with the same startle
and end with caterpillars gorged on milkweed.

O, how we entertain the angels
with our brief animation. O,

how I’ll miss you when we’re dead.

Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize
Elizabeth George Foundation Grant
Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The American Poetry Review
Daniel Varoujan Award
Poetry International Prize
CantoMundo, Cave Canem and MacDowell fellowships