Educators

Under the billowing heat of the white
tarpaulin church tent, my mother lowered
her worshipping hands and…

There is a woman who lives on a bed.
She is awake
watching the magpie that comes each morning.
Awake…

For those who don’t come to the end of this poem,
some harsh and endless wave of ocean
will bring to…

At the playground, my mother hid from me, I couldn’t find her, and I called her name a thousand times…

Of all the species
of eight creeping things

I burst my pink peppercorn
of DNA and became a bird,
like you…

First, I took off my jacket,
then my shirt, pants,
shoes, underwear, then

my skin, then my muscles,
then…

While I waited
fall came on.
I sat in one
bright interstice
and nothing
filled, it was
already at the brim…

Wild for once, we drenched and drugged and flung
our sunstarved bodies into brunching and clubbing and…

Here, my one raucous prayer
coaxed from this poor drum,

my double heart, under a beat-up slat
of divine…

Sleep with your face visible so the young will remember you are with them.
You want the others to see…

in which kobe seeks a mentor to train him

Praying for a fiery muse, he was
answered by the clang of hammers…

Some mid days, blank moments in loud
gatherings when I fall from the conversations’
sweetening threads…

Who art in Cali.
Programmer by trade.
Thy start-up come,
thy will become
an FTSE 500.
Give us this day our…

I pass between lions
guarding what's inside:
bound gems to open,
endless words that sparkle.
I read till…

Arctic tundra,
Arctic tundra,
How does your garden grow?
With lupine seeds
And fireweeds
And bearberries …

Big and bold now, write your name.
Draw an arrow, then take aim
at a puffy heart: "Kim loves Kyle."
Doodling…

"Snug as a bug in a hug,"
says Gran, like she always does,
and laughs down my neck
with her smoky-mint …

As if sweet olives blossomed again after the first Bailu frost, shadows
Talk, tiger tail grass talks,…

my hands are still my hands
like my grandfather’s hands
are his hands and they
are on the window
attached…

It was July. I must have been sixteen or seventeen,
And proud to be chosen for a grown man’s work,
Hollowing…