Let the ballerina find relevé on

Soft surfaces of migrating meteors

in Louisiana and Haiti, a hat is a hat
is a hat? bitter? is the ash of the ghost  

of Ophelia?   we taste it now.

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i even went to college. but i studied African American Studies which is not
The Law or The Medicine or The Business. my mom still loved me.
so i invented her sadness & asked her to hold it like a bouquet of fake flowers.

My lover is a furry beast, except at the tail.
I want to skin him and make myself a coat
before the harmattan gets here. The cold is
always curling in, claws becoming a fist.

every day in your absence,
I take less comfort in the growth of living things.

‍

Were you there that groggy afternoon

I crawled inside a playhouse in my

childhood city?

‍

I hear the slide
Of a shotgun
Racking in my mind.

Not things that float—moon, jellyfish, dust in sunbeam, skins of ice, skim on warm milk...