

MississippiMississippi's an old lover that I've yet to escape, She's got my unlisted phone number and my new address. She won't stop knocking with her leafy pine needle fingers, peeking in my windows when I'm undressing, catches me off-guard on the park bench with my sketchbook in hand. And I capture the curves of her body so carefully that even a stranger could tell the exacting wells in her eyes are really vacuums that continue to suck me back in and swallow me up. I floss the veins in her thighs onto the paper with blue ink and the soil on her dirty knees stains the inside of my jacket. HerMississippi


LavenderInside tents, the restfully awake Are dandelion heads sobbing rain. Down, around the Muscatine vines andLavender
From under the weeping maple,
In a cradle of humus and feathers and beads, The flowers are laughing and gray.


To the Birds and Other TalesI may have been the last one in the snowdrifts. Abandoned.To the Birds and Other Tales
Left to catch the fireflies and document their treason With tally marks on maple leaves.
But, last summer,
When we were Guianese dancers, We wore our russet-colored dresses
So that we could go to the armory
and
Marry whomever we first laid eyes on- we
Wrapped nickels in our hair to ward off the simple threats: War, hunger, death, and cellulite. And we tucked walnuts beneath our breasts To make them sacred.
We went to the altars; we doused our
Lips in the contours
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