poem: matrimonium

for very small moments my life is beautiful. there is Paris in a mason-jar, girls kissing boys on the sidewalk, rain coming like piano jazz. the baby is crying for me, lisping Maman Maman; he is like his father. And we were like staccato-ed beats: small carnivals of mirth, small hollows in the neck, your…

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…