Avocado tree

In the summer when the avocado tree
begins to bear fruit,
Mother keeps the gate locked.
They swell green and full, hanging precariously
falling with a dull thud on damp leaves.
we hand them out as gifts
to neighbours and loved ones. They accept graciously.
Our avocadoes are renowned for their buttery softness, firm and yellow and good,
larger than one’s hand;

They make days slide easily forward
through hot afternoons and warm nights
until all memory of hardship is gone.

Girl-wolf

Little girl howling at the moon

AWROUUUUU
She is playing at being a wolf;

being quiet and fast,

she

JUMPS

at the milkman as he stops by the front door with the milk

he says ‘You scared me!’ and pats little girl-wolf on the head.

Girls can play wolfs because they can smell things

and when the moon shines big and yellow

they howl.

Many-limbed, spider-eyed
love
pokes constantly at my ice-covered mouth
in vain.

Greenwich Median Time

At this time-Greenwich Median Time-

I have peeled back all layers;

clothes, hairpins, makeup, dirt,

sitting barefoot and quiet,

and am writing you, you who dance,

four hours into my past.

From here I can predict that the oceans will boil

from the white heat of our rage and wanting

would that I could fly as a seagull, keening, backward,

from my perch here

at Greenwich Median Time.

Asiatic

Across the steppes they went,
following the buffalo, away from hunger.

Over the Bering with spears and furs, carrying their young,
through redwood forests and the desert and the warmth of the south.

And further still to the islands scattered throughout the sea, where my great grandmother was born.

Their dust clings to the soles of my feet

footprints stretching back across the ages.

I

I am slick city rain,
like tears unending.
I am quiet within quiet,
the blank eyes of a baby.
I am seas within a continent,
forever separate.

I have spent time without and seen without and
been without.
I will be hungrier still before the end.
I am settled within this skin and this body and I am
thankful. Let trumpets sound, or let none.
I am I.