The American Poetry Review July/August 2021

Machete When they stareI know it is my skin they fear, this face,this hair so unlike theirs. I meet their eyesand make them sway like fields of cane.When they stiffen, I sharpen the edge of my smileand watch them fall. I love themin my cake, how they sink in the dark coffeewhere they give up the sweetnessthey make me take one slice at a time. Two Dolphins Because the instructionshad only pictures, I put the crib togetherin half the time. Have I told youhow lost I feel, how words confuse mewhen they sit limp like a water hose with no wateron a sheet of directions next to words? I’m sodisoriented right now by the imaginarysheet of words I just inventedthat six lines ago I wrote “next to words,”when what I meant to write was “nextto pictures.” And even the whole businessof that water hose simile is odd,but not in the good way, and…

Donika Questions the Oracle Who hid my dad in the mountain,impoverished, where he would remain,invisible and rationed, not on milk and honey,but on bologna and saltines, until he grewstrong enough to kill the father? Which father? Do I mean his daddy, exiled for the restof his diabetic days to a closetin a house with no power, no water,where my dad—his sisters and his brotherscaught for a time by the crack rock and the pipe,lighting up in the dark—lived? Surely not his daddy, oracle, surely not. How long was he the youngest? How longwas he a child? What god swallowed himwhole? The god, perhaps, who splithis mother in two? Or took his brotherwith a bullet from another father’s gunin the sunlight in the afternoon? Did he really hold his dying brother’s hand,oracle, the brother who wantedonly an…

The Animal Kingdom When Owen was bornI was afraid, like all newfathers are afraid, that I would drophim and break his head, stillshaped like a cone, the shape his headtook so smartly to slip outof his mother’s body and pierce the world.Soon I had endless dreams where the skybroke and the soul of the sky slippedout and moved like a giant pink squid abovethe back porch, the street, the grass.When I woke I would go to himand lift him up and rock him and movemy fingers along his new spinelike a harp. I had what you would callanxiety. I kept thinking about what would happenif I stepped on him, on his head as he layon the wool baby blanket,how my foot would feel coming down and throughhim, his baby-skin, his beginning-skull.How the whole world would turn intoa kaleidoscoped coffin— repeating forever.I kept thinking what would happenif I forgot him in the car, in the…

You May Eat I’m leaving a set of vintage flatware in my shopping basketin the event no one else buys it and should I come by a windfallI can swoop back in and purchase it, and complete myself: We always had perfectly matching flatware in the housein which I grew up, even, I think, to introduce an errant forkwould have been blasphemous; in fact, I don’t think I could have birthed the idea myself; I have only, later in life, comeupon the idea by happenstance, because of the jumble that isthe drawer of cutlery, merged sets between two households: with five people at the table, you give up on coordinating. Myfather always sat at the head of the table, my mother and Iat his either side, and though he did not cook he evaluated the…

Moon of hunger, moon of hope, moon of cold nightsand telescopes. Hunter’s moon, low-slung and bloodorange,moon of fruit and moon of thorn. Mother mooncharming a fussy child, werewolf moon fightingan urge to go wild. Pale thumbprint sugaringthe afternoon’s pale blue, neon moon electrifyingall the night through. Full bellied moon, pregnantwith luck or disaster, moon of witch-chant, halo, antler.Watercolor moon, soft brushstrokes, wet on wet indigo.Moon inside me, shifting tides. Moon with thumb outhitching rides. Witch moon bright behind a clawof dark branches, skinny-dipping moon, back seats,taking chances. Up-all-night moon, drinker’s moon,moon of worry and moon of deathbed. Holy moon,traveler’s moon, money tucked in a sock, a combin its pocket. Moon we aim for with our rockets.Crossroads moon where the devil plays his tricks,junky moon, a sweet stargazer fix. Bake-my-miseryin-butter-and-brown-sugar moon.…

A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon Gwendolyn Brooks (1958) From the first it had been like aBallad. It had the beat inevitable. It had the blood.A wildness cut up, and tied in little bunches,Like the four-line stanzas of the ballads she had never quiteUnderstood—the ballads they had set her to, in school.Herself: the milk-white maid, the “maid mild”Of the ballad. PursuedBy the Dark Villain. Rescued by the Fine Prince.The Happiness-Ever-After.That was worth anything.It was good to be a “maid mild.”That made the breath go fast. Her bacon burned. SheHastened to hide it in the step-on can, andDrew more strips from the meat case. The eggs and sour-milk biscuitsDid well. She set out a jarOf her new quince preserve. … But there was something about the matter of the…