I wish the wild mint would bake its scent into my skin, / and I could drag it behind me, as if it were a train of silvery lace. / It never does, and that’s okay.

She says, “To write poetry about sacred spaces, I must understand what I mean by sacred spaces, il faut comprendre premièrement ce que je veux dire par Terre Sacrée.”

What I’m asking is will watching The Discovery / Channel with my young black boy instead / of the news coverage of the riot funerals riot arrests / riot nothing changes riots be enough to keep him / from harm?

In our house, nobody ever danced, / even though my father played Elvis / or Johnny Cash from the silver / CD player that rested on the nook

Hot summer and birds pillage garbage cans, / squabbling for scraps. / With ripped jeans and knotted hair, I follow / the unpaved road to town.

My socks are small trash bags, / and the street number of my house is zero. / Garbage cans are my walls on winter nights.

These sheep have no choice either / though even in summer / they still want to hear the truth

No one understands the traffic jams in this city, / how they just spring from the ground like this / and why, when you reach the head of the line, there is / no accident

The odor of stale hotdogs coils / around this truck stop of quiet men / who sit with faces bowed, bath kits / in laps, fair-like tickets in hand.

Prism vase, asters blue as glacier ice, / baskets of strawberries, croissants, / goblets lit with orange juice, / & the cathedral distant, the boat house / flying its flag in an international zone