The rocks are hot along the East RiverBelow hazy skies sent from Jersey Traffic.Pigeons peck at pieces of detritus,Walking calmly by pedestrians passingThrough the park during their allotted lunchHour. A girl with a strange frame —As if her ribs fused with her hips…

At the time, Leanne was meant to be going with Daryll Keyser. She played bells in Mr. Davis’ marching band, and Daryll played tuba. On the bus home from Tulip Festivals, still in their uniforms, they’d do things to each other in 10-minute turns...

My famous ‘Black Feminist Casserole’ was soon renamed ‘34C casserole’.

So what happensTo the VFWIn a global economyAnd the monumentsErected in reverenceAfter the boysWho became menCame back homeTo be fathersThen grandfathersGreat-grandfathersAnd start to fall awayAs the days creep byThat petty paceOf politics as usualFamily DiasporasAnd maybe…

And aren't we are so then so rarely The hero in another's story When we want to be. And why are we so always Rounding stories on the heroes Who don't want to be? And aren't we are so then are so rarely Heroes in each others' …

And the only time the TI-83 sees the light of day is when I'm rectifying my debit card purchases at such places as Kmart, Office Depot, Walmart, and Office Max, to make sure everything comes out even and good and perfect, a skill never learned in Trysics,

There’s a room Full of white And it smells Like bleach and Iron

A rose and two dollars. Where did they come from? I didn't know anyone who had visited my parents' grave recently, yet that evening I saw a white rose on my mother's side and two bucks on my father's. I took the money and placed my own flowers with the rose. It had to have…

Paul had come to Hawaii, like many young haoles from the mainland, to party. Partying proved to be lucrative for him. By early October 1982 he had done well for himself in Hawaii, living in a country house with sprawling lawns that held back the jungle foliage…

I pulled at her shirt like a slot machine.

In this 7-Eleven at 2AM I can write the saddest lines. / Among these malcontents and degenerates I am Ovid

Then there she is, and she makes me love-sad; it's a vehement, absolute, hard love-sad no one else needs to understand, though they can see; it's an emotion so concrete it's felt from the chest, not from a tenuous concept called heart.

Sometimes you wait by the mailbox and he doesn't come. It doesn't come, the letter, the talisman from another world you've been waiting for, and you give up. You finally open…

The orange sky melts away. Shadows fall and twist in the wind. I’m on patrol with three of my buds, there to retrieve the body of a fallen comrade, Bill’s body, we’re told. They got him, used him, then dumped his body in a ditch and said, “He

As soon as those planes hit the buildings on September 11, it was pretty much all systems go for Cheney's long-planned Iraqi invasion. But first he had to shitcan an aide who showed him in detail how Iraq would eventually…