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He pushed aside a photograph of a man with a knife stuck in his eye.

I crouched just like my mother burying nail clippings to ward off curses.

Sister Barbara folded her arms like a forbearing husband.

My books, I can hardly read them, they make so much sense.

Grasshoppers tumble from the reeds, snapping like electricity.

Fatwas condoned our arrest for the rouged contours of our lips.

She looks down the street for Scott’s truck. He’s late but so is she.

From a pyre on the burning ghat a corpse slowly sits up in the flames.

Arriving on earth’s paradise, wearing only light for their bodies.

A goddess was offended; her altar required my virgin blood.

But too much rain can translate anything to unspeakable.

With a hammer well aimed, try to destroy the whole with a single blow.

All the bears in the zoo look pathetic. Their eyes glazed, bodies lethargic.

A memory in the drip, drip, drip of the kitchen sink that won’t stop.

And the starved heart starts over, writing one line at a time.

If life was exchanged, who is to say it flowed one way?

A sociopathic streak on my father’s side I try to put to good use.

My brother stealing all the lightbulbs, my parents live without light.

Salt provokes, tenderizes. Your wounds, your dinner.

But we do despise beauty. We connect it with softness and immortality.

Here: geeky cyber-warriors crunch cheese Cheetos over keyboards.

My mother’s house was packed, painted, put up for sale—sold.

The leaves of the olives were made entirely of night, as if cut out of skies.

I bow to the life being lived in this finch on my terrace this morning.

Yes, Eylon thought, he lied to Cath. Lied about his day, about the risks.

He has his hands on Nii’s throat, and this time I do not stop them.

He bound me to blind obedience, for which I’d shown a propensity.

The emblazoned vessel performed my false and vulgar life—I knelt to it.

“The doors are closed,” she said, and we would not be flying to Paris.