Fiction & Poetry

A second sun is born here,a second sun lights firesover our crownswith magic words that pouredover the cliff sides…They are clearand we are thirstyfor the new language…for spell wordsthat make possible a second moonclimbing over the mountain.Rising as gentle as a morning Venusreturned from her time in Hadesher restin pomegranates and darkness. We drop seeds

You’re the one with the heavy chest and broad backthe buffalo soldier hairacross those wide ribs—bones of the world—down to your fast narrow hips You’re the one I lay down with at night You’re the one whose curls I pull through my fingersThe one who holds the earth still for me Yours are the dark

All day you lay on my heart like a heavy green cloud over those wanton plains: Stretched out in a yawn of arms that hold all the living things that run In gold and green and a million oranges, splattered with blues you would not imagine live in plains. But they do, like grasshoppers the

Our hushing in the night, the sill jar-cracked just a sliver To let the whispers escape like so many breezes into the night Dispersed into leaves holding secrets. We handle roars so loud no one knows what they say, And everyone around us closes their eyes light-tight to keep out the heat, Covering their ears

There was in the sky a light: purple and red bled out into blacks like A mouth just parting, eyes closed, one waited With baited Breath to see what emerged: a pain, a pleasure, a plead, a protest. And the words were like wind that tears at old weeds and carries them home, Leaving the

With thanks to Octavia Butler. Lionesses all—we know: Lonely we race savanna down For blood for meat For ourselves to be found in a kill of love. He hunts, too, for her, but it’s not the same. Protect Provide Profess And thank goddess. And yet, still it is not the hunt of love lioness makes:

Wise women made of reeds Rushing into water well above their knees. Women carrying children, carrying incense, carrying Scent of themselves, And the men in their sacks. Women, lionesses all, who work those bales Like thread, in and out of economies of loss. Locusts collecting where their hair begins Hovering for the color, sweat and

He is at sea. she is by land. the irony of her tidepool feeding on savanna, drawing down seeds as his horizons grow dark with stars cast on slack tide oceans flat and full of mirages at sea, or at sky? sand collects at the edges (his dry kisses) where young red crabs crawl out

poem 1 This savanna Poured out in the night Breathing in, breathing out, Sand and earth and dry leaves That circle before falling to their places. In this way, now, I breathe you, In and out, making your way; you circle above my mouth. Earthly things find their places again. Just as you will find

Last Born Who are you, last born? What did you know, lying on your mother’s chest, A twin in the world, Separated from mother and brother? What flesh did you speak, Thin paint of meat dense as clay? And what did you orbit, Your hands passing one over another? Taking flowers in hand: The magnolias

Your black eyes burnme up to cinders, ashes,screaming on the rock. I want your hands:my skin disintegrates,ashen back to earth. Your hand on my legburns through to bone taking withit all my tears. Day covers nightlike a woman and her man; heis taken away. Your sand skin seesmy otherwise unknown: thisbody, dawn broken. Salamander mine,Deep

LOVE SONG to SLEEP The whole world is asleep In the room next to mine – His little fists curled around A sweaty receiving blanket. Eyes closed so gently to the night And day alike, To my steps over the floor, And the 30-somethings’ party across the back, To military jets overhead, And the prostitutes