Portrait of a flower called the wrong name

From inside of this heap of light colored power

I heard you call me Marguerite

I heard you think chamomile of me

I heard you work your magic and point a finger

If only I could hear any louder

The elephant stampede that be your blinking sandals in the grass

Might sweat on me

And cause me to rot from the outside in

And from the outside in

Is how you, come greedy-And,

You always come.

No one lifts their head on the P-20

And I will sit- still

still pretending I know none

of their names

and beating my own

air drums until my stop-

until which I will pretend i

am sleeping in order to not

interrupt the abrupt sentences strewn

across the bus, this is real this is real, i

have to keep repeating

and to the woman in the back

seat we heard you the first time

and to the woman in the front

seat we heard you the first time

and to the man who

missed

the bus, that rock almost

hit my cousin

and to the man who is

looking

at me, i hope i remind you

of someone you love

Tell me what love gathers around your weakest bone

NO one lifts their heads

on the p-20.

unless it is to spit,

or to rock their

babies into silence

or get off

I sit sleeping neck crooked down

chin in chest.

wishing so badly that I had

somewhere to be

No one lifts their head on the p-20, 43 beans, 1,000 grains of rice

The green faced liar was never a giant

Maybe

I think maybe

We were sustenance before we were movements,

before we were jinxes,

before we were legends,

before we were ball gowns underwater,

until we are interns and internships

until we are currents, in reverse

The mothersoaker,

No one lifts their heads on the p-20

Some girls are born

In their grandmothers bed

Into their arms of

Their aunties

And I reach back

To nothing

After nothing, which seems to have legs,

To caress air in timber country

I might say I would

Walk and be known

A man may find you or you him

Enough of love telling me

To look over there

And then the news of engagement

Rips the brown from my lungs

And nothing is played

I sit Shiva once again,

Proudly playing an air drum

Between the mountains and the sides of our light and heavy heels

And this love thing

I grew up sure I would find him

So I swiped a couple backwards love letters through

near uterus and one day we will meet

And love might remember its name.

Winter Skin #3

And I could shiver

Wearing nothing but the moon

The faint smell of

A red delicious apple

On my lips, cold

Naked,

Womb empty

Amidst the whisper of salt on maroon skin

And i will not stop to offer praise, nor folly

The dampened feet i carry in the snow

All the while wondering how i got here

Beneath the sojourning stars

Who are eager to nest

In the crevice of my neck

We think of bare skin

And thoughts of promiscuity

Enter

Frame

But let my body be a poem with one

Hundred quotation marks, arguments

In the passage of time

Telling my story

A winter skin rhapsody

I needed you when i wrote the story

But i do not

Need you

now

Aur-intellus An integer Apple Ice cream Aim Inwards, Apple Ice-cream American Insulate America’s Isolate Angled insomer After Interstellar After Interscope Alter Introspect After Im-tomorrow Arranged Illsthero American Interface Any Interval Ancient Ice, Abled Isley, Aisle Integer Albright ides, Anything?

Ivy All good Iries Amy; I's Anything Icy, Albiet Idolized, Albiet Idol Always Idol Appetite Idle, Art-hugs Idle Anemia Idle Armenia Ice Albania I’m always in awe. It’s alleyway images Aimed into Airsolation images Are Idol Adjacent Izquerda Aimed Into Any-ting, inspiration Alpine, Inspiration Apple, in all Iridescent areas, irrigawa awaits, isolated, aria it, aeria ir-redeemed, Aural integer After Ineteen, African, Idols, Adulted, in August, i/escaped, Awfully, icedout. Awesome iced up, Awkward iNERGY, Aww Innocent, After ideology, Alter isms A1, Agnate ills, Angry insolent, always insolar, Afterall it Alters Imagery, An Image I am aware-of, interstellar-ishly appears in auburn in-laid abdomen-like images and in an instant, Able I am.

I am not an American poet.

I am not the left shoe

Blinking pigs

The entertainer

Breadwinner

Glue

Slash marks on the arm of Mal Devisa, who was just

Trying to gain

A little piece

For the devourers of leaves

Unknowing pain pain pouting pain

Or rain rain unchauffered rain

Why must you fall up said the stars to the droplet

Two four two

A mythology of pigeons

Five red hours

And slipping thumbs into the food

So delicate, history

Which escaped the encampment, pinching

His own cheeks and maniacally laughing

Or those same slash marks trying to remain unmaniacal use just a sound

Or a piece of string

And laugh, as the daughter of immigrants who always know how much seasoning could dry American tears.

Or how much glitter is in the eyes of an amateur kisser

What we have fathomed since

birth

molds us to be quite unfathomable

Birds Pant, Dogs Fly

I have never seen

A day so beautiful

Steeped blandly so blind

My afternoon green tea

Never boiled, must be shy

When i stand to sing

Some unnamed bird

Stopped to hear

And if only for a moment

Me, less human, the bird more

Wished we could tango

Or dance othered on moroccan rug

Wished we could at least

Shake hands

And thank each other for the rhythms

Still remembered

Coming down hard

On a thursday

Was it Sugar

From the way that my knees buckle

i saw i used to be a dancer

red tongue WOOO real mischievous

hips that never gave answers

born in a field in the caribbean

born on a planet i rendered

bored of the looks - native to us all

Still

Still evening, indigenous

they would demand to dance too

Had they the strength

July 21st

The clouds said, “Am I making myself clear”

And I said “You of all people know that you are clouds

Unwavering in the sky, you are both new and worn, the face of an aging woman

But how beautiful it is

That with trillions of you,

The sky never calls you a blemish

Never once plucks the cotton candy white

Body from the round orifice of blue

I take notes. And hope

For good I am never the earsore,

To be ducked away from

But my eyes a place

For the solitude of many

A refuge”

chew.

Every billion tooth,

there is a jack.

Every second drought, there is a far,

far, far away water The water glides under yemaya

who might not share what she ate

Should I drink the blessed blood of Jesus or eat red soaked nuts or live to

live and scold the terrace at dawn, or

live to call the poet a friend before noon

or yet which means angels have cause, if that’s all we knew

I knew, that sometimes during a revolution, silent, screaming all over the skies

There is a countryside of strong and abled angels who spell threat with dancing With limbs that have shoved

the bad days back into a simple shape I long to call them for you, despite thinking you’ll be fine.

Swap

In my old age

I will write

Horror stories of palms in frozen silk

They've traced my grandmothers clock and said it ended at inscriber describe

Her life, lightly drifting into trixolydian over wax or stone we played

with poetry

Administered from the bullied history

A new scent of blue

The smile an infant invents just for themselves

But not a fever touches espada. I pray to the cigarettes in the road.

the scientist i have met

picked his skin off with knives to tell me he loved

My cooking, I still don’t know

What to do with my hands

When nervous…

Sensible Shoes

Sensible shoes

I don’t have time

for your teliivision ads, world

heels so tall my head hits

the ceiling

sensible shows

come on world, I don’t have

bird brains. I wear

sensible shoes

plum colored lipstick

sensible shoes

sensible shoes sensible shoes

MEN are staring, what do I do?

Quick! do no shave

take them on a safari

tomorrow, after you paint your chest in shame

do not mimic the cheek bones

of informal stars

tomorrow wake up, admire whatever mustache

and firmly planted impurity

you find

find the men that were staring

yesterday

wear a long brown wool skirt

and flash

your sensible shoes,

She’s been crossing that street

She’s been crossing that street for years

Waiting for me to see her (?)

And during the nights where burlington is warm

I am a serpent with a motion due, how the pavement says stop spitting hold your tongue

Back

Big and pink

For sorrel some day

Free from death and it’s can crushing under the wheel

Of your head. Silent by a street car

I can feel the spirits weighing me down dressed in dapper black I am

But holy is the night I arrive in all white

The okra, bubbling a phenomenal opal cream

Hoping to remember a glimmer of you walking down the street

But let me be clear

I want nothing to do with her

I do not lean in to rehearsed symphonies

I do not linger in the dancehall still fat

I nibble on the night a cinnamon night

Where we sit non-lavishly but hoping to one day be kind enough for a roof or hardworking enough for a kiss

Some nights and in particular nights like this

The smoke gets too close

It gets too close.

New york Minute

When the poets speak

too softly and I cannot hear it.

digest it

Dear warped blu haired sunday of ferocious drinks on rocky tables

I take the midnight bike ride down to the bronx in lopsided dead brain dreams

The urban icarus Mahogany clipped wings

When the poets speak too sof

and I cannot hear it

I search for midnight, in Abstract Rude, paint splatters Black tar renaissances

I pull my hair back far and dance a rain dance

When the poets stop speaking,

I quit my quiet dayjob

And speak

Love poem #2

If you are waiting

for me

Dye all the doorknobs red, pull out the lipstick

Sticking to the walls

And everything else. Everything with a heartbeat will be chased down

With salt on the back of the hand

I will pick the cobwebs from your chest

and spin them into Sun

If you are waiting,

Lock the bathroom door. The retreat is selfish

And I do not like the sound of selfish

And every word

So dye all the bed sheets white. Crystal clear

So that the Doorknobs will turn

veiling space for me to lay down

And be kept in your arms pure

Even with the tattoos screaming halos

On 3rd street for a righteous god

To try on

A love letter to Jazz

If it’s music. you’ll feel it

Sound peeled me from the wall and dressed me in my own eyes

I know that scene

The shins of wandering scales

Don’t mind me

I’m new here. Slipping off beat like bark shedding its fingers

I’m new here

If music was my prophet

I’d bathe in chips of fine gold and lather rhythm

Like jukeboxes, taking off their hats, then shirts, then pants, then shoes.

\We know that chant, we know this rhythm

Twice removed by the haunting of feedback

I’ve met these veins I see my throat stroking,

Crawled through these autumn notes, red

Found Shores to swim off of, floating out to sea with blues

Ghost notes found holy again

Shameful

Shameful ways to sing your life black with growling pains

I know

I do, but.

I’m new here

Bouts Grammar

I still have two good hands left

One parched wine glass of a body

waiting for the moon to pour me onto the shores

This pterodactyl sun making wind

ruins murals theatrical games

United mischief

And Raised brows

Love even when standstill

Call her whatever you will please

Think