poetry
“My left hand still scarred where I scraped my knuckles against the brick wall. Here I am parted
from the laundry basket, the skillet of eggs, from the dog’s expectant snuffling…”
“she coulda done laundry, coulda soiled her clothes first, coulda made a name for herself, coulda
sat with her neck arched like a turtle on a stone…”
“count the days
and bones beneath your shirt…”
“My condolences to the generations of Mothers
Who swallow grief by the clip
Lead in their guts like five or fifty ‘warning’ shots
That ain’t miss//
To Mama Gregory,
you didn’t die a slave for nothing…”
“I caught her in the ditch again at dusk, thick in the brambles
of blueberries. She was digging at the roots like she meant to save
them from their station, to free a bush from its thicket...”
fiction
“In her dreams, Naomi was always driving.
The road unrolled before her like a perforated ribbon, winding amongst the night- dark trees. Shapes loomed out of the gloom, bone white and twisted strange, and she told herself that they were wood, nothing more, nothing more. What else would they be but trees?”
“Under the new moon, drowned children come out of our river. I don't know how long it's been this way. The notes from Sheriffs before me go back almost 100 years. They're called "foundlings" in those notes. My momma and grammy called them "water-children…”
“It had been in my family for as long as I could remember, for as long as anyone could remember, this heavy, ponderous thing, this inheritance. Its origins seemed to date back to the black and white parts of history, the eons that blended into long expanses of time where the stories of entire generations were reduced to single utterances…”
hybrid
“To me, you are Blue. (Not the mood, but the hue.) Have kindled a colour known for its chill; distilled a word so often stained in sadness with fresh meaning. I can’t be sure if it’s the clothes you wear or your aura that first decided this for me…”
“Being queer and coming out, I wondered why I would look at the willowy tall boys, neither gay or straight for sure, who have the best style, the cool badass mr. perfects, born to be looked at, leather sex gazelles…”