poem: western montana

my mother birthed me into stranger places -- the mountains shornand shot up, as if Ithere, was one of them: too-big blue sky fit like a salt-block into my open mouth, deer- and oxen-child. if I had been born into a city, the masturbatory smoke andskyscrapers cut up around me, think -- what a little…

poem: your reflection in the black phone screen

i wish i was instagram aestheticmulti-block primary color. advertise around my face: kpop album, mini EPfive plastic boys and finger heartssold last yearfor five million dollars. i wish i was happy the girlhanging by her neck in a fridge future countries ironically safer, if you find the rightangle the filter she looksalmost dead maybe foreignbig…

poem: the critical reading of innocents

the rising, falling, rollicking –what is american, what is americanliterature: they sit on stools,with feet tucked, crossedat the ankles, girls with milkshakesmiles, whipped-cream eyes –they are the Far and Away, gloryfalling like boys in foreign fields, writing homewriting mothers – i miss youi love you, i will be back.the people reading the bookshave missed it…

poem: my mother has done everything

She is two-stepping in an Arizona bar with some old-timer, the walls hung with adobe, tassels, turquoise bracelets for sale and the stereo bleeding out early 90's country-folk. The Indians at the bar are leaning in, stoically awed by the way this city girl already has the West in her eyes.   She will not…

poem: lady gatsby

she briefly subscribed to The New Yorker and wore the free tote around to parties, the black handles draped slim over her arms and the fabricked bottom so obviously stamped THE NEW YORKER that it looked forced, especially when hung against her JC Penny dress; "It was clearance," she says, proudly, and people give her…