I love the snake
that stifles my breath
I have built him
bit by bit
all these years
fleshed him
with fear so he moves...

Each night my handiwork charts Calypso’s serenade, the arrival
of things that can only be made from scratch, a second language
learned by the precisionist...

On the pier
in the harbour of Guinea-Bissau
on the coast of West Africa,
where cashews are shipped,
and cocaine arrives daily,
they wait through...

They tell me the banked fires
on every street corner tonight
reveal in smoke and tears the face
of the one you are meant to...

When the ordinary has become too safe,
too stale, we are advised to make it strange,
to look again, and magnify until the edges blur,...

All these for my lover:
A rocket science
Telescopes
A map of Jupiter
And a lantern —
Burning from the lips

I love you and...

Candle flame on cold pillar tallow,
Wick bent to dip of our wings,

Lighting up naught over naught of our lift,
Stretched days direct most...

Piled on the pews—a hideous laundry stacked and stained
(the twenty-two years of blood rust unbreathable),
their bodies vanished. But not their clothes—
bloodied shirts,...

She was a child, not much older than I,
facing the sheep she was herding
across this dirt road. Outdoor work
crusted on her shoulders....

After I have travelled your scalp
for twenty-two and a half minutes

dissolving the knots
smoothing the cramped

furrows of pain
you ask me what...

We wake to a mist
That clouds the river road,
Hovers over a field
Of soft-spun spiders’ nests.
Blackbirds beat and skirt
The trees, streak...

Madagascar was pulling out of Africa,
clumps of calcified ground ferried on water,
following the windward trail that produces
another year, row upon row of...

Last night
the moon was a bow.

I thought if only
I could place my arrow in it
I could kill all that lurked in...

There are bodies, selves we cast aside to build the Great Wall.
Our home crumbled; we shored up our stake.
Tiles, dirt, glass, sticks, the...