Welcome to the Good Life Review

When Dusty finally comes around to my window, slurring, I roll it down. Just a few inches. “Birdie girl, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I don’t not love you. It’s just…” He trails off and cracks open another beer, spits a brown gob on the concrete.

– Birds of Prey

And I do not want it. I feel a frantic scrabbling in my chest to push it all back down. Not yet, flowers. No more, birds. Wait. Stay dormant. Because when they blossom and pollinate and sing, you will still be gone. And, selfishly, greedily, furiously, I am not ready.

– Selfishly, I Planted Flowers

He grips me tight upon arrival.

Tears off a small bud

of rosemary from his garden.

Holds it to my nose and asks

“ain’t that nice?”

in a pitch and tenor

that sounds like a bear cub yawn.

– “For Kenny”

Vanilla pods sway on their branches, a tender calling,
french-braiding thatch palm baskets, bring back to me.

Sun brews beneath our sandals, sinew of Nyabinghi,
replant post-colonial conscious seeds, bring back to me.

– Ras Tafari Ghazal

no guitar played soft from your room at night,
sketches scattered on tables, it

doesn’t sound like a lot of weight, but,
without it, this house

drifts on its foundation, bends
in the wingbeats of hummingbirds outside

– Why We Cry

I hang on, making up names
for the trees, the birds, for ornamental concrete decorative holiness.
Forgive me, Frank,
for the pathways I wear into these woods, you
disappear under vines,
invite the landscape in to warm you

– Poem in Celebration of My Death

The note you left in your beater car,
the car I drove the next ten years,
I still haven’t read. But I’ve kept
the scraps of paper you used
to teach me the Pythagorean theorem.

– To Brother-Ghost on Halloween

These days, the temptation
of Christ might just be

like you & me:
not getting ourselves up,
poor at picking up after,

failing to put things right
back.

– Amnesty Week

ZEKE

Well, I mean, I just thought that it would be more… ethereal, or… weird, you know?

CATO

Are you disappointed that it’s not like you imagined?

– Purg City

In the sunset,
seeds of blue corn
grow with joy in the milpa.
They give their prayers
to the roundness of the moon,

– Ixim

Miri considers how some things in Korea never change. But not Yaewon’s son. Chubby second grader transformed into a mousy man wearing rimless glasses, he greets Miri and pulls a chair for her at the dining table. The earthy scent of Solomon’s Seal tea wafts from a chipped, bubble-round teapot.

– The Language of Family

His father said once that a good woman will make you feel like a man in all the right ways, and yet he was attracted to Avie for her own brusqueness, all the ways in which she made him feel not at all like a man.

– Pretty Women

My eyes were adjusting to the change between the hospital room and the outdoor light when I saw a stray dog near my car. I looked around for its owner but as I got closer and got a better look at it, I realized it was a coyote.

– Coyote