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Mothersexpand_moreThe night before my mother’s double mastectomy, we went skinny-dipping.
Walking on Canal Street, I slipped on the curb and fell on my face.
you cut through brush with the iron edge you push before you
Somehow my confession became a sharp knife I kept hidden in a drawer.
The year we left the reservation a white boy gave me a trash bag.
The canary-yellow sweater she knit while pregnant with me thawed first.
She has a small solid mess of troubles she longs to upchuck.
Children were driven by deep yearnings that should be satisfied.
The world is a riddle of shape and texture, from sight to smell to sound.
The problem, as it turned out, is: Forever can be surprisingly short.
He was caught. Of course he was caught. He was always caught.
I know what it means to be born in one life and meant for another.
Rays burst from behind the mountain, sweep the broad beach.
We were aiming for a complete transformation of society.
He doesn’t have to lie about oatmeal. That’s the way things are for him.
Ask your mother about babies. Ask her about the baby that died.
It had always been this way. Mothering, for my mother, was a cameo role.
My brush dissects her slick-back black hair to expose ugly white.
On Saturdays I listen to folk music, lead a life devoted to exodus.
“The other kids. They’re making ice cream. I’ll show you, come on.”
Marie was Indian, and everything Indian required patience.
Instead, I touch: The powdered organ. The thief-shaped hole.
Children can be seen as worldly things, not as souls with broken mirrors.
On the small of my daughter’s back is a two-inch tattoo. MADE IN CHINA.
Silence, a weapon of choice, hung between them, cut through the air.
My father then got partials implanted, which were later punched out.
When you are a father, want sons. There is some math in this.
The ashes of a human being are not ash. The body burns into wood.
She’d do anything once, to know what it was like.
He picked up the knife I had there, and said he’d kill me if ever I told.
