the arrows of words fly in
left and right
and the hornet’s nest goes wild
with fury

there, the child flinching at the sound
of the spoon being placed on the table,
now that she’s lived with a continuous three-year
pop-rumbling-scream war song

here, butterfly with broken leg on the hand
of the girl in the park

hummingbird doing her best
tho her flowers are so few

i still don’t quite get the story of the pyramids
you’d have to explain it to me again

while the leaders squabble about raising minimum wage one dollar

while one in three lose a limb to a train
in an attempt to get north to better paid work

i watched her tug at her sleeve

screenplay where we can bear it all

working on two novels

curfews in new orleans

without which, something like dark,
we wouldn’t come to know light

now here is a to z
and what will you do with this alphabet?

hawk swooping down
from the back field fence
and no one’s around

i’d like to be alive and fully conscious

and after getting her son up to here,
after all that, sending him back
to her sister’s in honduras
because he’d fallen into the tracks
of crime and prison

we would run to the hills to live
but we’ve forgotten how to live off the land

the sea rising

taking the time, all the time in the world

another kind of weed i haven’t ever seen
in the sidewalk

     - 2007