I see the horizon’s crimson vein and recall the stained washcloth in your small room. I thought (truly this is what I thought) that someone must have wiped the juice from a freshly cut watermelon then placed the neatly folded cloth in the sink. No matter that it was not watermelon season or that you had died that morning, dead before your head hit the table. In that moment before grief rolled up its sleeves, your dark-eyed daughter stood before the stainless basin, wringing the cloth under the tap.

My entire wardrobe was Canal
Street original, knockoff chic,
adolescent sleek in my double XL

blue & black bubble jacket.
Yeah, I was inside the club
& what? Inside an oversized

coat coated in sweat & Old
Spice, a kid eyeing sixteen but
not quite there. I wanted it all,

chico: learner’s permit,
the latest Jordans in baby
blue, maybe a wink from

the pretty Boricua from Social
Studies. & when Biggie’s
verse dropped in “Only You”

he was in that room & teaching
us how to live elevated from
that third-floor wasteland towering

above India Point, so we sang,
sour throated & nostalgic
for times we hadn’t yet lived,

in unison: like we wrote it, till our
voices cracked & spilled over
& between every rift but in

the throng of lost kids where
I finally found a self I loved,
it all came together like we

could remix any wreckage
& make it into a stage
to slay, so we swayed &

grinded like our lives
were a music video
tribute, hip-to-hip.

Too bad about the plate, the shadowbox, the twisted book.
The universe conspired, a felony against your face
in search of the tiny light that carves such things,
a grand piano to play, a poor painting by Paul Stanley
resembling the way I feel today,
full of rhododendrons half rotten sweet.
We walked through the dead cells twice, clubbed foot,
until I had to concede, I’ll call out sick,
though the sickness is ill—it’s the still weeds of guilt
I’ve been trained to feed with each yawn,
every ruffled stir I tamp down with glances
at the working sky for any sign of a white moon sweet rot.
I know it when I hear it, but did you see what I said,
the moth of my words tattered, a harp banging
at the bulb of this cold blossomed forest?
I bend on glass knee looking up; you are someone else too,
when you want. We are one bird behind one bird,
one bird behind one laughter, one breath behind one rib,
one silence behind one handwritten mask,
one scalp behind one spine, one dawn behind one skull
opened by one bullet, one skin, not us, then another,
with long bones reaching one question,
the one certainty we know each other with, embarrassed
or proud, snowed in or lullabied, skulls throughout.

She charges her ankle bracelet // from the kitchen chair
& Sunflowers in the white wallpaper [begin to wilt].

I wilt with them // before my sister // & her probation
Officer [who comes over to the house unannounced].

Just as we are // preparing dinner // & what are we supposed to
Do now. Cook for him?! Invite him to eat with us??



I am hacking the heads [from broccoli stems] & pretending
His body is spread across the cutting board. [Ugh].

This officer keeps talking nonsense & nudging his eyes around
The apartment. Looking for—drugs, alcohol

Alchemy. My sister waits for him to leave & then begins to rant.
Ramble about // her childhood // & how she used to be

[Before house arrest]. The confines of these plastered walls
& Her monitored route to work // where

Every corner has a cop [coddling a liquor store]. Protecting their
Notion of freedom. // My neighborhood eats fear.



Mothers are getting // handcuffed & harassed. Homes are being
Crushed [like cigarette butts]. Everyone I know

Hates the racist police & wants a revolution. // But we seldom
Aim the gun... Have you heard // how the bullets

Sing their anthem // throughout the body?? // It sounds like
God shutting the door— Bang. Bang.



When it’s dinnertime in heaven [& your officer’s knocking]
Ignore him sister— let the door bruise.

[Let the bears devour our enemies]. We have no obligation
To open // ourselves // for those who do us harm.