A Longhouse Birdhouse

Winter Night, Sent to Wen Tingyun Pains finding a poem to read you in the lamplight. I haven't slept all night long — I have this cold q...

  As Winter Sets In One morning while brushing your teeth, a strange face in the mirror. Am I still in there? you ask, No reply. This face: ...

 

  R E A D   M E Farrar, Straus, Giroux 2025

  BACK ROAD CHALKIE HALLOWEEN 2025

 

R E A D   M E

      Chess Records    1990

  Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience. Foreword by Kevin Young, Contributions by Aaron Bryant and Amy Sherald and Tuliza Fleming and Bi...

The Ghost Wife Who, after years with her husband, years of rearing their strapping boy, is scorched by an eye. She was gathering laundry. Th...

  J A C K    D e J O H N E T T E        Arden Wray for The New York Times

  Essay I guess it’s too late to live on the farm I guess it’s too late to move to a farm I guess it’s too late to start farming I guess it’...

 

  R E A D   M E   New Directions 2021

      1996

Selva Oscura When I close my eyes, I find myself in an expansive darkness the color of dawn; I sense it on your fingertips. Forget the lie t...

 Spiral Staircase     In search of a bawdy shade of blue, without the slightest wisp of cloud, stair by stair ascend. I've stumbled, by ...

  A   T A L K 

 

  Rage It wasn't you they saw on the television screen, it wasn't you as they filmed you coming out crumbled from the rubble, who th...