You can say my mother didn’t know jack
           about no line breaks, but she’ll tell you
that one thing leads to another; and violence
           and love can happen all at once.

In the parallel world in which gesture is followed /
by recompense

I once wrote letters to a prisoner at Guantánamo. The letters always came back / opened.

The first capturing your gaze into nowhere
the other when you covered your face with your hands
so you were not anonymous, only unseen

a sunset makes a sound doesn't it
I learned    too late

Who did this to you?

in 1989 you walk the main road to /
Tiananmen when the inexplicable /
hits

Why didn't I just say / people like us here / at this table / should not just talk about politics

Relying a little less on the odd language we’d been left inside / we turned back to feeling: — / more moan, more mumble.

Drowning is something that happens to others, not to them.

trudging back to Eden.

Your lone question —
What happens when you ignore a part of someone? —
Would flood me, and in time, knock down
Every structure.

most days, during some mid-day hour, / I close my eyes and say the Sh’ma. / But it’s always the wrong time of day, / and it’s the only prayer I know

I’m not sure anymore / how far joy gets us

a presenter / interrupts a program to break the news of migrants / found dead on the shores of river niger. i look down / the streets through my window.

My life too has ended
many times over. Now I’m
doing all I can to return

even the long-gone
once knew tenderness.

it’s happening / again. everything / outside me / get to switching  / channels. brown black / carbon black / black cat black

shouting / the same words but in different languages

there is nothing but performance; the language that stretches to capture us all

I begin to feel my body rise / and I can believe / in what freedom must feel like.

To not have had the luxury to think “the world is over,” but to feel it instead.