the whole world is wrinkled like elephant skin

Thank you to Rivet: The Journal of Writing That Risks for publishing my poem: the whole world is wrinkled like elephant skin.

Issue number one is now available to read. The twelve authors featured in this collection include emerging and established writers from around the U.S. and abroad. You’ll find fiction by Danielle Susi, Jønathan Lyons, Jude Bridge, Killian Czuba, Owen Wynne Jones, and Siamak Vossoughi; poetry by Aimee Herman, Alan Catlin, harvey ellis, Sharon Coleman, and Steve Light; and an essay on a personal kind of hybridity by Gyasi Byng.

Rivet is available online and for free!!!!

gratitude.

these clouds, a collision of applause

maple walnut peanut butter

my dad

moleskine notebooks and extra fine black ink pilot pens

sundays

modern love

crown street home

kazim ali’s poetry

rebel

my skin

sobriety

wrists without serration

u.s. postal service

august

those warriors of gender and the ones I am still searching for…

music MAkers

coffee

my soul sister

the moon!

the scent of campfire

my ability to poem

poetry teachers nyc

pancetta bruscetta rivera herman (I and II)

that fallen tree against the lake at prospect park

employment

the contagion of elephants

collaborative art forms

yann tiersen

hard-working lungs

a resilient mind

an appetite

when I am [able to be] present

moving on

white rice

eleanor

farmer’s markets

community gardens

NY Times

creative circle

C & Peggy

found he(art)s

semi-colons

magic

notice what you notice when you notice it

Notice a tree.  Write about it.

Bark  infected like homeless mother’s limbs with skin weathered from winter and bed bugs. 

Go outside.  Write about it.

I stare at an open field and search for the bodies held captive by tall wheat or poison ivy.

Visit amusement park for children called zoo.  Write about it.

 

I see an elephant and describe its skin as heated crust. I count each fracture disrupting the smooth. I call it monster call it mammal of wild grey call it me in the evening when enough bodies have rubbed against me to feel bloated and heavy, a swell of weight.

Climb up staircase of memories in body. Question what needs to be questioned.

 

Why do humans violent away their childhoods?

 

 (instruct)

search urgency

     

Treat body like leftover supper and microwave toward normal

 

(an urge)

I want to remember the days when nothing occurred.

found poem (revised)

1.
Remember, bent
knees beside your shoulder
purple tie
belted waist
breath in swallows

2.
look up the word freckle in the dictionary
harmless brown patch
clustered color
genetic like grass from soil

3.
the bathtub grows arms
when body dips inside
smooth porcelain container

4.
she is gulped oceans

5.
roots
sing me awake

6.
bruise love
in
turquoise & promises
nightlights & pillowcases
belt loops & pulled zippers

7.
manatee falls in love with elephant
swim toward new species
hunt grey swim

8.
your memory is of August trees

9.
to be left or to leave
dried salt
drunk off preserved time

elephants are contagious

sand prints built into feet

elephants are contagious.
warhol’s rorschach could be man-eating fallatio or four-legged mammal dissected or a crime scene of AIDS on body or just some paint on canvas.
why that woman has 2 am eyes with nose like ladder without the foot breaks.
arrive with DNA waving against floorboards, fallen from head shake.
some feet are abusive, turning rock granules called sand into concave whimpers.
she dies: too much evaporated cane juice bruised into peanut grind and what it feels like to call a spoon murder weapon.