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When the snake attacked the soldier, its fangs left a violent opening.

Some people see the man but not the light, the field but not the varnish.

West Oakland was characterized by unemployment, poverty, and blight.

Ajax killed men and then animals thinking they were men.

Grasshoppers tumble from the reeds, snapping like electricity.

Bees kill wasps by gathering around and tightening in the middle.

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

After several months, I worked up the courage to share a war poem.

I’m recalling his socks, the inked initials, the splashes of blood.

The poem I can’t yet write saves itself for when it can’t be avoided.

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

Condemned to an easy life balanced on the suffering in another land.

Beyond her ampleness, he stands a small man vanquished.

David Lee

For the president’s arrival they shot two dogs making love on the tarmac.

My soul is simple; it doesn’t think. Something strange paces there now.

Men are so delicate, must be given many portals. I try to be game.

Arrows shot by the halt at the lame,
 Opinions come and go just the same.


She regarded the world calmly without the filter of her suffering.

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

My mother is queen of buttons. She shows off the prized ones.

The first skeleton drawn from the earth, they called beautiful.

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

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

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

Wet air. Big windsound in the leaves—a kind of prayer, maybe.

I wanted my love to be everywhere, then love began to bite through me.

All right. We are perfect. Tomorrow we will make a million dollars.