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Poems from OBIT

Death is our common ancestor. It doesn’t care who we have dined with.

Praying Naked and Other Poems

Forgive me, please, for continuing to believe that roses are beautiful.

Promises

He folds on himself like a sheet kicked off the foot of a bed.

Rapture Basement

I used to be known for the humor of my music, the lightness of touch.

Reading Her Poetry

I was once a rider of mastodons, a waitress showing skin.

Reading Rilke and Other Poems

The men here don’t know where to place me, call me exotic grail.

Reading Sebald and Other Poems

When I’m reading him I feel myself come closer to you than usual.

Refinement

For a moment I had the delicious feeling of fitting in without even trying.

Reflections on Newtown: No Safe Place

If it were fiction, calling the place Newtown would be too much.

Resolution

Someone’s walk is pretty much who they are, from the beginning.

Rewriting Illness

I was happy I had no one to talk to, to be alone. Happy to be in the hospital.

Reynolds Price

Roanoke Rapids

I hear Tchaikovsky when I close my eyes and pretend I’m flying.

Running the Table

There was an intimacy to the sound that thrilled me.

Sad Little Outlaw

I was always being left behind in the mud, a bandage around my eyes.

Samaritan

Throwing the El Camino into drive, he roared down the mountain road.

Satellites

The alert says Warning: Wild Exotic Animals Loose.

Savages

The new generation doesn’t play war, which is a shame; they text.

Say Something about Child’s Play

Like a bird with a broken wing I will smudge the line of the hopscotch.

Self-Portrait With & Without

You have to be three times better than the white kids, at everything.

Senior Spring

I saw myself, and for the first time, I didn’t look away.

Senior-Year Psychology

The sex in these fantasies was always a product of love.

Shirley Hazzard

We have mysterious inclinations. No one can explain it to us.

Shuttle Diplomacy

Her appearances are fleeting, a gust of air, a murmur in the night.

Silk & Silk

She was the idiot who fell in love with some high-class gigolo.

Sin Vergüenza

He felt desperate for the rains, mosquitoes be damned.

Since the Accident

Since the accident she lost her hold on the world and never got it back.

Sleepy

Hearing the baby’s cry, Varka finds the enemy who is crushing her heart.

Slope

In school, he was called gook, chink, and one boy called him ching-chong.

Smoke Days

Teddy, the new sous chef, is on fire again. It’s the second time in a week. I make a silent promise to myself never to have sex on a beach, not even with Ryan Gosling.