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3 Poems

Nadir I


At night they went,

not muffling their footfalls,

to wake us one by one

and draw our blood.


At first I resisted, because

I resisted everything.

My voice was my sharp. They served us coloring pages (to rip) and Honey Maid graham

crackers (to crumble). Someone changed the linens,

I don’t remember who. Someone prescribed the snow, the pages,

the radio, the crumbling. I don’t remember who.

There were a lot of us.

We were a choir of little waxy paper cups.


At first I resisted because

I resisted everything. I cited every law I understood.

My voice was matted and ripped.

The nurse spoke French.

Ça va aller, she said.


We were a choir of little waxy paper cups.

We made hats out of them,

before we crumbled them,

and fairy houses,

before we unseamed them with our fingernails.

We made paper chains.

On Sundays we would crayon long lines

on construction paper and crease it,

wet it with saliva and bend it

back and forth

back and forth

back and forth

til it tore clean.



Glass Sheets


I’m breaking white crayons

beneath my garden heel,

loading Morning with my smartphone Times.

The fridge is humming like an eldritch

god. Rot is spreading:

the peppers, the garlic.

Milk comes out in clumps

with my hair, so I drink my

coffee straight.


My grandmother reproaches me from under the frame:

By my age, by my age, by my age.

Hush now, I tell her. For every gleaming

pearl around her neck, a yellow tooth of mine.

I know all about the kitchen you kept, I say.

I know how you kept it clean.


Lives get smeared under floodlights

when you take them and put them to household use.

An ending that’s not a street to avoid —

that would be nice,

wouldn’t it?

Something for gals like us

to write the recipe for.


I pick the burrs

out of my feet

one by one.



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